CMS Releases Final Payment Rules (IPPS, IRF, LTCHs, Hospice, and Psych): At the end of last week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released a set of final 2016 payment rules affecting acute care hospitals and other providers such as psychiatric and long-term care hospitals. Overall, payment updates were within most analyst expectations, but the larger story is the continuing movement tying payment to quality and also adoption of electronic medical records.

For example, acute care hospitals that report quality data and are also meaningful users of electronic medical records will receive a 0.9 percent increase in Medicare operating rates. Alternatively, hospitals that do not report quality data or are meaningful users would be cut by a quarter or half of their market basket update respectively.