Samantha
Liss Published Dec. 17,
2019
Dive Brief:
·
A federal judge will not stop CMS from implementing its
site-neutral payment policy in 2020, according to an opinion filed Monday.
·
In September, the judge ruled in favor of
hospitals pushing back against CMS' payment cuts to their off-campus hospital
clinics for this year.
·
Despite the judge's ruling, CMS went ahead with plans to
implement similar cuts in 2020. The hospital lobby then asked Judge Rosemary
Collyer of U.S. District
Court for the District of Columbia to apply her previous decision to 2020 as
well. She denied this request Monday, noting it is not within the court's
jurisdiction.
Dive Insight:
As CMS looks to
curb healthcare costs, it has attempted to pay the same rates to hospital-owned
facilities as independent physician groups, known as site-neutral payments.
Hospitals
balked at the move and filed a lawsuit in an attempt to block the cuts. The
hospitals may find success through the courts again but they may have to wait
until next year, according to a reading Collyer's ruling.
"In short,
regardless of the reimbursement rates CMS may have set in years prior, and
whatever the basis for those rates, each year CMS must take new agency action
to promulgate new reimbursement rates for the next calendar year. This
understanding of the operation of the 2020 Final Rule forecloses the Court's
jurisdiction," Collyer wrote.
Her previous
ruling in September only applies to the year 2019, she said.
However,
Collyer appeared critical of CMS' decision to pursue the same policy for 2020
despite her earlier ruling. She said CMS "clearly disregarded the
substance" of the court's earlier finding.
"CMS has
now intentionally placed itself in a position to suffer those same alleged
harms, which calls its argument into serious question and appears to set the
agency above the law," Collyer wrote.
https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/judge-refuses-to-strike-down-2020-site-neutral-plan-but-chides-cms/569189/
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