On December 2, 2020, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) finalized policies that are consistent with the directives in President Trump’s Executive Order, entitled “Protecting and Improving Medicare for Our Nation’s Seniors,” that aim to increase choice, lower patients’ out-of-pocket costs, empower patients, and protect taxpayer dollars, a fact sheet reports.
The fact sheet continues:
“These changes would build on existing efforts to increase patient choice by making Medicare payment available for more services in different sites of service and adopting policy changes under the Medicare Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) and Ambulatory Surgical Center (ASC) Payment System.
The CY 2021 OPPS/ASC Payment System final rule with comment period would further advance the agency’s commitment to strengthening Medicare and reducing provider burden so that hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers can operate with increased flexibility, and patients are better equipped to be active healthcare consumers.
This fact sheet discusses the major provisions of the final rule with comment period (CMS-1736-FC), which can be downloaded at: https://www.cms.gov/files/document/12220-opps-final-rule-cms-1736-fc.pdf”
ASC Covered Procedures List
For CY 2021, we are adding eleven procedures to the ASC covered procedures list (CPL), including total hip arthroplasty (CPT 27130), under our standard review process. Additionally, we are revising the criteria we use to add covered surgical procedures to the ASC CPL, providing that certain criteria we used to add covered surgical procedures to the ASC CPL in the past will now be factors for physicians to consider in deciding whether a specific beneficiary should receive a covered surgical procedure in an ASC, and adopting a notification process for surgical procedures the public believes can be added to the ASC CPL under the criteria we are retaining. Using our revised criteria, we are adding an additional 267 surgical procedures to the ASC CPL beginning in CY 2021.
For more information, visit https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/fact-sheets/cy-2021-medicare-hospital-outpatient-prospective-payment-system-and-ambulatory-surgical-center-0.