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FFY2023 HCAHPS VBP Will Be Payment Neutral

August 26, 2022

CMS recently finalized proposals for the Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems (IPPS), which can be viewed here. As proposed in May, for FFY2023, CMS is suppressing several VBP measures and implementing a special scoring methodology that results in each hospital receiving a value-based incentive payment amount that matches their 2% reduction to the base operating DRG payment amount–making the payment adjustment neutral. This will be the second year that they implemented this change due to the impacts of the pandemic.

As proposed, CMS will suppress the following measures for FFY 2023:

  • Person and Community Engagement: HCAHPS
  • Safety: Healthcare-Associated Infections
    • Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infection (CAUTI) Outcome Measure
    • Central Line-Associated Bloodstream Infection (CLABSI) Outcome Measure
    • Specific Surgical Site Infection (SSI) Outcome Measure
    • Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) Bacteremia Outcome Measure
    • Clostridium difficile Infection (CDI) Outcome Measure
  • Clinical Outcomes: Mortality Measures
    • Hospital 30-Day, All Cause, Risk Standardized Mortality Rate Following Pneumonia (PN) Hospitalization measure (MORT-30-PN) (previously suppressed in the FY 2022 IPPS/LTCH PPS final rule)

They also finalized their proposal to continue to use a baseline period of CY2019 for the FFY2025 (performance period: CY2023) program year for HCAHPS, meaning we will use the same achievement thresholds and benchmarks that we used for FFY2023 (performance period: CY2021) and FFY2024 (performance period: CY2022).

If you have more questions about this final rule, please reach out to our CAHPS® team at [email protected].