Medicare Raise to Owners

Nursing homes will receive a 2.2% Medicare pay raise to owners for fiscal 2021. Nursing home operators will receive an aggregate $750 million Medicare pay increase for fiscal year 2021 beginning Oct. 1, 2020. A CMS fact sheet on SNF PPS (CMS-1737-F) can be found here. The final rule for SNF PPS (CMS-1737-F) can be found here.

CMS announced that it has limited annual SNF rulemaking except for essential policies including Medicare payment to SNFs. The rate reflects a 0.1% cut from the originally proposed net 2.3% market basket update. However, CMS is not making them spend the money on safe staffing, personal protective equipment, or infection control.

The final rule also finalizes changes to the ICD-10 code mappings used under the Patient Driven Payment Model to classify skilled nursing patients into payment groups. Additionally, the rule finalizes updates to the SNF Value-Based Purchasing program.