ASCs would see a 0.6% increase and hospital outpatient departments a 2.1% increase in Medicare payment rates under the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ proposed rule for calendar year 2010 policy updates, issued on July 1.

According to the proposal, which plans out the third year of the revised ASC payment system’s 4-year phase-in, 2010 is the first year in which surgery centers are eligible for inflation adjustments.

For ASCs, the proposed rule adds 28 procedures to Medicare’s payment list, including 2 for which new CPT codes have been created and 26 that had previously been excluded from reimbursement. (The ASC Association is planning to post a list of 2010’s payable procedures and a local payment rate calculator on its Web site.) CMS’s proposal does not require ASCs to conduct quality reporting in the coming year.

For hospitals, the proposal includes the caveat that facilities that didn’t participate in or didn’t successfully comply with the Hospital Outpatient Department Quality Reporting Program will see their annual payment update docked by 2 percentage points, resulting in an increase of only 0.1%.

It also suggests improvements to the reporting program, including verification requirements to ensure that data is reported accurately, the public availability of the data that hospitals collect and possible future areas of quality measurement.

CMS is accepting comments on the proposed rule until Aug. 31 and anticipates issuing its final rule on the issue by Nov. 1.

—David Bernard