CMS has released its CY 2012 Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) Final Rule, effective January 1, 2012.  Notable provisions of the Final Rule include:

• A market basket update of 1.9%.
• Adjustment to payment rates for certain cancer hospitals.
• A process for the APC Panel to evaluate requests for alternative supervision levels for hospital outpatient therapeutic services and issue recommendations to CMS on the same.
• The addition of three quality measures for hospital outpatient departments to report for purposes of the CY 2014 and CY 2015 payment determinations.  The new measures include: (i) a measure relating to cardiac rehabilitation patient referrals; (ii) a measure relating to the use of a safe surgery checklist; and (iii) a measure relating to hospital outpatient department volume for selected surgical procedures.
• A reduction in the number of randomly selected hospitals (from 800 to 450) for validating hospital outpatient quality reporting data for the CY 2013 payment determination.
• Revisions to the hospital value-based purchasing program.
• A process for physician-owned hospitals to apply for an exception to the federal prohibition on expanding facility capacity in physician-owned hospitals.

You may review a display copy of the Final Rule here or CMS’ summary here.