Thursday, July 29th, CMS released their FY 2022 Final Rule. A few of the highlights impacting skilled nursing facilities include:
Payment update
- Estimated 1.2% increase in payment rates (not including SNF VBP reductions or Wage Index adjustments)
PDPM Rate Parity Adjustment
- Delayed PDPM pay rate adjustments until next year – a welcome relief after CMS had disclosed the increased spend under PDPM in 2020 vs. 2019’s RUGs based model on an intended budget-neutral program change
Updated Base Rates for PDPM Components for FY 2022
Wage Index adjustment
- FY 2022 is available on the CMS website at https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Medicare-Fee-for-Service-Payment/SNFPPS/WageIndex
ICD-10 Mapping
- Updated PDPM ICD-10 code mapping assignments impacting PT, OT, SLP, and NTA components available on the PDPM Website at: https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Medicare-Fee-for-Service-Payment/SNFPPS/PDPM
QRP Measures
2 new QRP measures which impact the annual payment updates in FY 2023 include:
- Reporting requirements surrounding healthcare-associated infections (HAI’s) like pneumonia, urinary tract infections, and sepsis
- VBP Healthcare Personnel (HCP) Measure requires SNFs to report COVID-19 HCP vaccination of their staff beginning 10/1/21 through the CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network
Value-Based Purchasing (VBP)
- VBP suppression of the 30-Day All-Cause Readmission Measure (SNFRM) for the FY 2022 VBP program year due to COVID-10 PHE circumstances – all SNFs will receive a score of 0 irrespective of how they perform using the previously finalized scoring methods