The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) held its fourth public meeting of the 2024–2025 meeting cycle from Dec. 12–13. Commissioners heard presentations about and discussed key concepts germane to their upcoming report, with a focus on payment adequacy and updating payments for:
- Physicians and other health professional services
- Inpatient and outpatient services, as well as a report on rural emergency hospitals
- Skilled nursing facilities
- Inpatient rehabilitation facility services
- Home health care services
- Hospice
- Outpatient dialysis
For fiscal year 2026, the MedPAC chair proposed a draft recommendation that Congress update the 2025 base payment rate for general acute-care hospitals by the amount specified in current law plus an additional 1 percent. The chair also proposed recommending that Congress redistribute Medicare disproportionate share hospital and uncompensated care payments using the Medicare Safety Net Index (MSNI) that MedPAC recommended in its March 2023 report and that Congress add an additional $4 billion in funding to this MSNI pool to support safety net hospitals. MedPAC will vote on these draft recommendations at its January public meeting.
A full summary of the discussion is available to members of the America’s Essential Hospitals Federal Action Network (FAN). To access this summary and other policy resources, join the FAN today.
Contact Director of Policy Rob Nelb, MPH, at rnelb@essentialhospitals.org or 202.585.0127 with questions.
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