Increased Options and Reduced Costs for Surgeries Proposed
For 2021, CMS proposes to expand the number of procedures that Medicare would pay for in the hospital outpatient setting by eliminating the “Inpatient Only list,” which includes procedures for which Medicare will only make payment when performed in the hospital inpatient setting. This proposed change would remove regulatory barriers to give beneficiaries the choice to receive these services in a lower cost setting and convenience to go home as early as the same day after a procedure, when their clinician decides such a setting is appropriate. CMS would phase-in this proposal over three years and would gradually allow over 1,700 additional services to be paid when furnished in the hospital outpatient setting. In 2021, approximately 300 musculoskeletal services (such as certain joint replacement procedures) would be newly payable in the hospital outpatient setting . The proposed change would be the largest one-time reduction to the Inpatient Only list by far; from 2017 through 2020, approximately 30 services total were removed from the Inpatient Only list.
