June 9, 2025- Premier submitted comments on the fiscal year (FY) 2026 Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) and Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) PPS proposed rules.
In its comments in response to the IPPS proposed rule, Premier urges CMS to:
- Enhance the market basket update to reflect the impact of labor expenses, inflation and other exogenous influences and consider new or supplemental data sources to ensure labor costs are adequately reflected in the Medicare hospital payment;
- Solicit input from the hospital community on reforms to the wage index and efforts to improve the sustainability of workforce, especially in rural communities;
- Make refinements to the Transforming Episode Accountability Model (TEAM) to ensure the model is a success for hospitals, CMS and Medicare beneficiaries by:
- Permitting all participating hospitals to also be eligible for Track 1 in their first performance year, regardless of when they join TEAM
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In its comments in response to the SNF proposed rule, Premier recommends that CMS:
- Develop a process and methodology that directly and accurately captures wage costs;
- Advance a comprehensive approach to the transfer of health information by focusing on additional efforts for interoperability across the care continuum, including SNFs, via electronic data exchange;
- Incentivize SNFs to adopt electronic clinical surveillance technology to reduce and prevent healthcare associated infections;
- Develop standards and measures for data exchange and sharing across all care settings, including SNFs; and
- Implement a Value-Based Purchasing program methodology that will result in a 70 percent payback percentage each year.