The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission has released its March 2022 Report to the Congress: Medicare Payment Policy. The report includes MedPAC’s recommendations for Medicare payments in 2023.
For the coming year, MedPAC recommends the following changes in Medicare fee-for-service payments:
- hospital inpatient payments – increase 2.5%
- hospital outpatient payments – increase 2.0%
- long-term care hospital payments – increase approximately 2.0%
- outpatient dialysis payments – increase 1.2%
- physician, ambulatory surgical center, and hospice payments – no change
- skilled nursing facility, home health, and inpatient rehabilitation facility payments – reduce 5.0%
The report also reviews the status of Medicare Advantage and the Medicare prescription drug benefit (Part D) and provides congressionally mandated reports on four policy matters: a payment adjustment for certain low-volume acute-care hospitals; recent changes of the home health payment system; the performance of certain specialized Medicare Advantage plans; and a value-based payment program for post-acute-care services.
MedPAC is an independent congressional agency that advises Congress on issues affecting Medicare. Its recommendations, while binding on neither Congress nor the administration, are highly respected in public policy circles and often find their way into future Medicare legislation, regulations, and policy.
Learn more about MedPAC’s latest recommendations to Congress from MedPAC’s news release introducing the report; an executive summary; and the report itself.