Federal Register :: Public Inspection: Medicare Program: Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems for Acute Care Hospitals and the Long Term Care Hospital Prospective Payment System and Final Policy Changes and Fiscal Year 2021 Rates; Quality Reporting and Medicare and Medicaid Promoting Interoperability Programs Requirements for Eligible Hospitals and Critical Access Hospitals

Federal Register :: Public Inspection: Medicare Program: Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems for Acute Care Hospitals and the Long Term Care Hospital Prospective Payment System and Final Policy Changes and Fiscal Year 2021 Rates; Quality Reporting and Medicare and Medicaid Promoting Interoperability Programs Requirements for Eligible Hospitals and Critical Access Hospitals

Learn More About Finalized Changes to the Medicare Promoting Interoperability Program for 2021

On September 2, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued the Fiscal Year 2021 Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems (IPPS) for Acute Care Hospitals and the Long-Term Care Hospital (LTCH) Prospective Payment System (PPS) Final Rule.

Finalized changes to the Medicare Promoting Interoperability Program include:

• Maintaining an electronic health record (EHR) reporting period of a minimum of any continuous 90-day period in CY 2022 for new and returning participants (eligible hospitals and critical access hospitals [CAHs]);  
• Maintaining the Electronic Prescribing Objective’s Query of Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) measure as optional and worth 5 bonus points for CY 2021;
• Modifying the name of the Support Electronic Referral Loops by Receiving and Incorporating Health Information measure to the Support Electronic Referral Loops by Receiving and Reconciling Health Information measure to better reflect the actions required by hospitals; and
• Increasing the number of quarters of electronic clinical quality measure (eCQM) data reported, from one self-selected quarter of data to four quarters of data, over a three year period, and to begin public reporting of eCQM data for eligible hospitals and CAHs as early as the fall of 2022 using CY 2021 data.

For More Information

To learn more about these and other finalized changes, review the final rule, press release, and fact sheet.

For more information on the Promoting Interoperability Programs, visit the Promoting Interoperability Programs website.