Skilled nursing facilities will be issued corrected value-based purchasing (VBP) reports following a calculation mistake by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
CMS informed skilled nursing facilities of the error, which could potentially impact their Medicare payments, according to LeadingAge. The agency indicated Thursday that the mistake was due to a “small number of stays that were either erroneously included or excluded from the calculations,” said Nicole Fallon, LeadingAge vice president of health policy and integrated services.
Fallon said she is optimistic the error’s impact will be minimal to SNFs.
“It is possible, however, that a SNF received an initial value-based incentive payment modifier of one, which means they would come out even on their rates for FY2020, but perhaps in the corrected VBIP (value-based incentive payment), they may see a slight rate reduction,” Fallon told McKnight’s. “We really won’t know more until the corrected reports come out from CMS.”
SNFs don’t need to take any additional action once the corrected reports are available, she added. CMS anticipates rate adjustments using the corrected VBIP modifier will still take effect in October.
The SNF VBP program awards facilities with incentive payments based on the quality of care they provided to Medicare beneficiaries.
CMS also plans to host a Medicare Learning Network call aimed at helping SNFs better understand their VBP Program performance score report. It will be 1:30 p.m. Tuesday.
