Congress should increase ambulatory surgery center payment rates by 0.6% in 2011, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) recommends in its March 2010 report to lawmakers. In the absence of congressional action, ASCs would receive an inflation update in 2011 equal to the Consumer Price Update (Urban), which if calculated today would be 1.4%.
MedPAC says the payment update should be made in conjunction with a mandate that ASCs begin submitting cost and quality data to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The report's conclusions are similar to the recommendations MedPAC made to Congress in its annual report last year.
"We do not have sufficient data to assess ASCs' quality of care because ASCs are not required to submit quality data in any form," the panel notes in the report. MedPAC also suggests that CMS could use cost data from ASCs to "decide whether to use an existing Medicare price index as a proxy for ASC costs or to develop an ASC-specific market basket."
The full report is available as a PDF from MedPAC's Web site.
Irene Tsikitas
