The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) offered its support for proposed changes to the inpatient prospective payment system for FY08, but suggested several refinements to ease the transition and improve payment accuracy.
In a June 11 letter to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Acting Administrator Leslie Norwalk, MedPAC encouraged CMS to adopt Medicare severity DRGs as proposed, but to improve the transition process through steps including a –1.6% to –1.8% per year adjustment for two years to “offset the expected impact of improvements in documentation and reporting of diagnoses.” MedPAC also suggested several steps to improve payment accuracy, including adopting cost-based, hospital-specific relative value weights.
