FY 2027 Skilled Nursing Facility PPS Final Rule Summary

On July 31, 2026, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) published in the Federal Register (91 FR 48588) a final rule updating for fiscal year (FY) 2027 the Medicare skilled nursing facility (SNF) payment rates, SNF Quality Reporting Program (QRP) and the SNF Value-Based Purchasing Program (VBP). The final rule also includes a summary of comments received from a request for information (RFI) on updating the Patient Driven Payment Model to address case-mix upcoding and improve payment accuracy. In addition, CMS discussed comments received on whether it should consider using alternative data sources to construct a SNF-specific wage index for potential use in future years.

For the SNF QRP, CMS finalizes its proposal to remove beginning with the FY 2028 SNF QRP the COVID-19 Vaccination Coverage Among Healthcare Personnel measure and the COVID-19 Vaccine: Percent of Patients/Residents Who are Up to Date measure. In addition, beginning with the FY 2029 SNF QRP, CMS finalizes changes to the SNF QRP data submission deadlines and, beginning with the FY 2031 QRP, to require the submission of Minimum Data Set (MDS) data on all residents receiving covered skilled care in a SNF. The agency also summarizes comments received on a RFI regarding a future measure concept on advanced care planning. For the SNF VBP, CMS provides final numerical performance standards for specified measures for the FY 2029 and 2030 program years. The agency also finalizes modifying the snapshot dates used for purposes of the SNF VBP review and corrections process to align with the agency’s revised SNF QRP’s submission deadline for MDS assessment data.