The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on May 1 announced its proposal for new, more accurate FY09 payment rates for Medicare skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) that more closely reflect differences in patient care needs.
The agency is proposing to recalibrate the case-mix weights in order to reestablish budget neutrality on a prospective basis. CMS is also proposing to recalibrate the second part of the refinement package that accounted for the use of non-therapy ancillary services. The proposed FY09 recalibration of these adjustments to better reflect the resources used by beneficiaries would result in a reduction in payments to nursing homes of $770 million, or 3.3 percent. However, this decrease would be largely offset by this fiscal year’s proposed update to Medicare payments to SNFs. The update--a proposed market basket increase of 3.1 percent for FY09--would yield $710 million in increased payments to SNFs. Taken together with the proposed recalibration of the case mix index, SNFs could expect to see a slight decrease in payments of $60 million, or 0.3 percent. Public comments on the proposal will be accepted until June 30, 2008. Download the proposed rule.
