138 members of the House of Representatives have written to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator Seema Verma to protest CMS’s proposal to extend Medicare outpatient site-neutral payment policies to off-campus, provider-based outpatient departments specifically exempted from such policies by Congress under the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015.
In questioning CMS’s rationale for the proposed policy, the House members wrote that
It is unclear how CMS has deemed all of the OPD [outpatient department] services at the grandfathered off-campus HOPDs [hospital outpatient departments] as cause of an unnecessary increase in volume of OPD services, and we ask you to provide clarity on this when making these payment changes.
The House members also wrote that
The agency has also proposed cutting payment to 40 percent of the current HOPD rate for grandfathered off-campus HOPDs that begin to furnish a new service from a clinical facility not offered prior to November 1, 2015 which could unfairly penalize grandfathered off-campus HOPDs that expand or diversify the critical services they offer to meet the changing needs of their patients.
Go here to see the House letter.