The American Hospital Association, which represents 5,000 member hospitals, health systems and other healthcare organizations, has submitted a letter to CMS commenting on its proposed hospital outpatient prospective payment system and ambulatory surgical center payment system rules for calendar year 2024.
For calendar year 2024, CMS has proposed an update of 3 percent less a productivity adjustment of 0.2 percentage points for ASCs. The AHA has “strong concerns about this inadequate update, especially when taken together with the underwhelming market basket increases from calendar year 2022 and 2023,” according to the Sept. 8 letter.
The AHA believes proposed changes do not capture the current inflationary environment or the financial headwinds health systems are facing. It also does not account for high labor and supply costs that persist.
“We urge CMS to examine ways to account for these increased costs to ensure that beneficiaries continue to have access to quality outpatient care. We also urge the agency to reduce the productivity cut for calendar year 2024 as such a cut does not align with hospital and health systems’ public health emergency experiences related to actual losses in productivity during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the letter says.