Regulatory upheaval continues amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. A series of MLN Matters articles posted to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) website earlier this month covered a variety of topics, including, of particular note, a rundown of changes made by the October 2020 update of the Ambulatory…

Changes are effective Oct. 1, 2019. It’s that time of year again! Time for the Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) for fiscal year (FY) 2020. And with that comes the updates to the Medicare-Severity Diagnostic Related Groups (MS-DRGs) and the complication/comorbidity and major complication comorbidity (CC/MCC) diagnosis lists. See the…

CMS delays acting on CC/MCC revisions as had been expected. EDITOR’S NOTE: Dr. Erica Remer reported this story live during the Aug. 6 edition of Talk Ten Tuesday. The following is an edited transcript of her reporting. For those of you who were tuned in to Talk Ten Tuesday to hear…

Anticipated changes in the CC/MCC designations were delayed.  EDITOR’S NOTE: Senior healthcare consultant Laurie Johnson reported this story live during Aug. 6 edition of Talk Ten Tuesday. The following is an edited transcript of her reporting. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) FY20 Final Rule…

Final rules will impact nearly every type of healthcare provider. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) presented us with quite a number of Medicare payment rules in the last week or so, referencing almost every type of provider in the program.  The final rules included the Fiscal Year…