Lawmakers Push for Standardized Post-Acute Data Collection

Legislators are looking to standardize post-acute care assessments and payments with a new bill that would make it easier for policymakers and providers to see whether one care setting is more appropriate for a patient than another. 

After releasing a draft in March, the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees have introduced the “Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation (IMPACT) Act of 2014.” 

The act calls to change the assessment instruments used in a variety of post-acute care settings, defined by the houses as skilled nursing facilities, home health agencies, in-patient rehab facilities and long-term care hospitals. These changes, the bill states, would allow providers to report standard data across a number of areas, including functional status, cognitive function and mental status, medical condition and prior function levels.

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The resulting standardized data would show “whether patients treated and the care provided in different settings is, in fact, the same or whether one [post-acute care] setting is more appropriate,” the two committees noted in a joint statement.

These comparisons would then be used to implement post-acute payment reforms, according to the bill. It would require the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission to evaluate and recommend to Congress features of a post-acute care payment system or systems “that establish payment rates according to individual characteristics instead of the setting where the patient is treated,” the measure states. 

Access a breakdown of the measure. 

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Written by Emily Study

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