21 Jun The Task Force Provides Input to CMS on FY 2023 IPPS Proposed Rule

Posted at 12:47h in Policy Communications by

TASK FORCE INPUT TO CMS ON FY2023 IPPS PROPOSED RULE

The Health Care Transformation Task Force filed comments on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Inpatient Prospective Payment System Proposed Rule (CMS-1771-P).  

  1. RFI on Diagnosis Codes for Social Determinants of Health: The Task Force supports CMS’ push to collect data on patients’ social determinants of health (SDOH) but cautions against mandating the use of z-codes for this purpose. Instead, the Task Force offers recommendations for methods to achieve the goal of increasing standardized SDOH data collection that leverage processes that are already in place across many inpatient systems. 
  2. RFI on Principles for Measuring Healthcare Quality Disparities Across CMS Quality Programs: The Task Force expresses support for CMS’ proposed principles for measuring disparities and reporting quality data stratified by race, ethnicity, language, sexual orientation, gender identify, and other variables, while also providing recommendations for ways to increase the availability of self-reported patient-level data to achieve the goal of stratified reporting. 
  3. New Measures Proposed for the Inpatient Quality Reporting Program (IQR): The Task Force supports the implementation of three new health equity-related measures in the IQR: (1) Hospital Commitment to Health Equity; (2) Screening for Social Drivers of Health; and (3) Screen Positive Rate for Social Drivers of Health. All three measures address the needs of the system and consumers to have more visibility into hospital performance on various domains that reflect a commitment to health equity and to screening and identifying patients’ social needs. The Task Force also supports implementation in the IQR of the Cesarean Birth eCQM measure, and the Severe Obstetric Complications measure.
  4. Establishing a Publicly Reported Hospital Designation on Quality and Safe Maternity Care: The Task Force is directionally supportive of CMS’ proposal to designate safe and high-quality maternity care hospitals. However, the letter expresses concerns about using solely the Maternal Morbidity Structural measure as the basis for this designation.

Read the Letter