The members of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission met virtually last week and reviewed and discussed preliminary proposals for 2027 Medicare rates and other Medicare payment issues.

Leading the agenda for the two days of meetings was a review of the adequacy of current Medicare payments and discussion about rate 2027 rate recommendations for:

  • hospital inpatient and outpatient services
  • physician and other health professional services
  • inpatient rehabilitation facility services
  • skilled nursing facility services
  • home health care services
  • hospice services
  • outpatient dialysis services

MedPAC members also discussed:

  • their mandated report on rural emergency hospitals
  • an update on site-neutral payments, including the possibility of making greater use of site-neutral payments for the delivery of Medicare-covered services
  • trends and key issues in acute care
  • improving Medicare’s payment approaches
  • a mandated report on the impact of recent changes in the home health prospective payment system
  • a mandated report on MedPAC’s assessment of the Medicare ground ambulance data collection system

MedPAC makes its recommendations to Congress, not to CMS, but they are considered influential among administration policymakers.  Among its recommendations, MedPAC called for:

  • increasing Medicare inpatient and outpatient payments by the amount provided for in current law
  • increasing physician and other provider payments 0.5 percent
  • reducing payments to inpatient rehabilitation facilities and home health providers by seven percent
  • reducing skilled nursing facility payments four percent

The prospective payment changes discussed during this meeting were only preliminary recommendations; MedPAC will make its official recommendations to Congress early next year.

MedPAC also reiterated its past recommendation to move from away Medicare disproportionate share (Medicare DSH) payments and to distribute future supplemental Medicare payments to qualified hospitals based on a hospital safety-net index of its own devising supplemented with an additional $1 billion.

Learn more from a transcript of the meeting and links to the staff presentations on each of the issues listed above, including assessments, discussions of key points, data, and preliminary recommendations for 2027 changes in Medicare payments.