In less than four months, the recently reconfigured Health Services Cost Review Commission, along with its new chairman, Nelson Sabatini, will vote on a global budget update for hospitals for the coming fiscal year. Last year, as hospitals were ramping up population health management efforts in the earlier stages of the modernized Medicare waiver, HSCRC approved a 3.3 percent average per capita increase - the largest in more than six years. That delivered more than $500 million to help hospitals develop the capabilities they needed to meet the requirements of the waiver.

 

With hospitals successfully reducing avoidable utilization and hospital-acquired infections, and achieving more than $116 million in savings to Medicare to date, MHA has been laying the groundwork for what could be a more contentious debate about an appropriate global budget update for the coming fiscal year.

 

The update, which commissioners will vote on in June, will hinge on a series of factors, including:  

MHA has been developing positions and supporting materials to address each of these issues, as well as others that may arise during the negotiations. And all of this is occurring simultaneously with efforts to determine the next steps in the long-term direction of the all-payer model (efforts are underway to deliver a proposal to CMS before President Obama's term expires and CMS leadership undergoes a large overhaul).