The American College of Surgeons recently responded to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Inpatient Prospective Payment System proposed rule which identifies criteria for inpatient admissions.
The proposed rule would presume the admission was reasonable and necessary if the patient spent two midnights at the hospital or received a service on the inpatient-only list. ACS responded that the "proposed rule fails to address the difficulty that physicians face in determining whether a patient should be designated as an inpatient or on observation at the time of decision making."
The organization requested a delay to finalizing the proposed rule to include labor and delivery days in the calculation of hospital Medicare use "because it may decrease graduate medical education payments to hospitals."
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