The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that it will raise the total estimated Medicare spending for inpatient psychiatric facilities by 2.3% next year.
This means that total payments to inpatient psychiatric facilities (IPF) are projected to increase by $70 million in fiscal year 2024. CMS will also update Medicare’s payment rate to inpatient psychiatric facilities by 3.3% next year.
One of the other major changes that the new rule will implement is allowing hospitals to open inpatient psychiatric facilities in the middle of the reporting year, which the administration uses to increase access to care.
CMS is seeking to kick off a request for information process (RFI) for further rate changes for 2025.
CMS also announced that it will adopt four new measures in its IPF Quality Reporting (IPFQR) program. The first is a facility commitment to health equity measures, including the provider attesting to making health equity a strategic priority, collecting data, analyzing data, implementing quality improvement and promoting leadership engagement.
Under the new IPFQR CMS will also adopt a new screening for social drives of health, which can be adopted on a voluntary basis in 2024; it will be mandatory in 2025.
Additionally, CMS will adopt a measurement for the percentage of patients who screen positive for having health-related social needs. This will also be voluntary in 2024 and mandatory in 2025.
The fourth new measure is a patient experience of care measurement, which is based on a patient-reported survey. CMS is starting this measure on a voluntary basis in 2025 and will require the measure for 2026.
CMS has taken a number of steps towards expanding access to behavioral health services for its recipients. Earlier this month, CMS dropped a new proposed rule that would allow Medicare to cover intensive outpatient programs (IOPs) for mental health and substance use disorder (SUD) treatment.
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