With transmittal 321 (Change Request 5928), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has directed Medicare fiscal intermediaries and Medicare administrative contractors to accept the recommendations of an industry cost report workgroup for improving the accuracy of the inpatient prospective payment system’s (IPPS) new cost-based weights for diagnosis-related groups.
The request is effective with cost reporting periods ending on or after Sept. 30, 2007, and has a March 31, 2008, implementation date.
Among other things, the workgroup recommended that hospitals should:
* Prepare their Medicare cost reports so that Medicare charges, total charges, and overall costs are aligned with each other and with the categories currently utilized in the Medicare Provider and Review
file
* Focus on the reporting of medical supply costs and charges on the cost report as the most significant problem area
* Examine how they are completing their cost reports and adopt the approach of classifying all billable medical supply costs and charges to line 55 of the cost report and mapping the 27X Revenue Summary codes from the Provider Statistical and Reimbursement Report only to line 55
Read the recommendations.
