The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has released the hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) Proposed Rule for short- and long-term acute-care hospitals. The Proposed Rule not only updates the Medicare approach to Medicare-Severity DRGs (MS-DRGs) reimbursement, but also advocates for the President’s executive orders addressing quality, inequities, and outcomes in healthcare.  

While there are no new MS-DRGs, minimal changes to the MS-DRG algorithms, and another one-year delay to implementing a comprehensive complications and comorbidities (CCs) and major CCs (MCCs) restructuring, proposed four years ago, CMS proposes 10 new Inpatient Quality Reporting measures, such as Hospital Commitment to Health Equity, Screening for Social Drivers of Health, Screen Positive Rate for Social Drivers of Health, the Cesarean Birth Electronic Clinical Quality Measure (eCQM), a Severe Obstetric Complications eCQM, a Hospital-Harm/Opioid-Related Adverse Events eCQM, the Global Malnutrition Composite Score eCQM, and others that certainly will have clinical documentation integrity (CDI) and ICD-10-CM/PCS coding implications.  

During the next live edition of Talk-Ten-Tuesdays, James S. Kennedy, MD, president of CDIMD, will briefly outline which of these warrant the immediate attention of ICD-10-CM/PCS-oriented physicians, providers, coders, and CDI specialists, who are being asked to formulate and submit comments prior to CMS’s June 17 deadline. 

The live broadcast will also feature these other segments:

• Coding Report: Laurie Johnson, senior healthcare consultant with Revenue Cycle Solutions, LLC, will report on the latest coding news.
  
  
•  Talk Law: Knicole Emanuel, Partner with Practus, will continue with the broadcast’s newest segment. 
  
  
•  RegWatch: Stanley Nachimson, former CMS career professional-turned-well-known healthcare IT authority, will report on the latest regulatory news coming out of Washington, D.C.
  
  
•  News Desk: John Zelem, MD, FACS, founder and CEO for Streamline Solutions Consulting, will anchor the Talk-Ten-Tuesdays News Desk.
  
  
•  Point of View: Susan Gatehouse, a guest cohost who will be substituting for Dr. Erica Remer, will report on payor strategies that should be implemented to mitigate the already long road to payment.