Industry Note:
CMS Speeds Regulations For Bundling Medicare Payments.
Published on Tue Jul 26, 2011
Having your Medicare payments bundled into hospital reimbursement may happen sooner than you think. One of the initiatives in the Affordable Care Act health care reform law was to bundle payments for various providers a patient sees. The most popular idea seems to be bundling post-acute providers' payments into hospital payment rates. The ACA sets a January 2013 date for starting a demonstration project to test the bundling format. But CMS may get the demo up and running even earlier, suggests a top CMS official. Dr. Richard Gilfillan, acting director of the new Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation at CMS, recently said the agency will speed the release of bundling-related rules, according to press reports. CMS expects to focus on bundling post-acute payments first.