Good news for centers that perform cataract surgery: CMS has withdrawn a proposed rule that would have required eye centers to report the combined rate of unplanned admissions, emergency department visits and observation stays among Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries within 7 days after receiving a cataract procedure at an ASC or other outpatient facility.
"We vehemently objected to this misguided measure, emphasizing that ASCs lack the legal and practical access to hospital records and could not report such data," says Michael Romansky, JD, the Washington counsel and vice president of corporate development for the Outpatient Ophthalmic Surgery Society.
CMS issued the list of measures under consideration, which outlines quality and efficiency measures it's considering for adopting into rulemaking, to comply with the Affordable Care Act. The Measures Application Partnership is a public-private group convened by the National Quality Forum to provide input and feedback on the selection of performance measures before they become rules.
