On November 1, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid released their calendar year 2020 Medicare Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System and Ambulatory Surgical Center (OPPS/ASC) Final Rule and 2020 Revisions to Payment Policies under the Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) Final Rule. The OPPS/ASC rule removes total hip arthroplasty (THA) from the CMS inpatient only list (IPO). Total knee arthroplasty (TKA) was removed from the IPO list in 2018. As you may recall, AAHKS opposed this move, as we do not believe there has been adequate action to address the issues that arose from the removal of TKA from the IPO to now support the removal of THA. The rule also moves TKA to the ASC Covered Surgical Procedures List (CPL) for 2020. To learn more about these issues, Read our OPPS/ASC and PFS summaries.
For those in attendance at the Annual Meeting, join us on Saturday morning for the Town Hall discussion on payment.