On August 2, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) published the Medicare Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) rule for fiscal year 2018, without including two American Nurses Association (ANA)-recommended nurse staffing measures. ANA submitted a comment letter on the proposed rule to CMS on June 13 that strongly endorsed the inclusion of two nurse staffing measures. ANA also submitted a separate comment letter focused solely on the inclusion of the staffing measures, which included 26 co-signatories. The fiscal year 2018 rule goes into effect October 1.
However, CMS did allow for the possibility that the two staffing measures could be included in the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting Program and Hospital Compare for fiscal year 2019 and/or subsequent years.
Despite this setback, ANA is developing a coordinated strategy to ensure collaboration with members and the consumer groups who support the inclusion of these important measures to strengthen its position going into the comment period for fiscal year 2019.
As a result of ANA’s action alert, there were 1,363 comments submitted to CMS, with 259 Facebook shares and 57 Twitter shares of the action page. ANA thanks all those who supported this initiative.
Read the letters and more about ANA’s policy and advocacy work. And stay up to date.
