AHA participates in KFF panel on site-neutral payment

The AHA June 17 participated in a virtual panel discussion hosted by KFF about site-neutral payment. Participants included Ashley Thompson, AHA senior vice president for public policy analysis and development, Zack Cooper, Yale University associate professor of public health (health policy), economics, and in the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Zachary Levinson, project director of the KFF Project on Hospital Costs and Larry Levitt, KFF executive vice president for health policy. The panel discussed why site-neutral payment has become an issue for policymakers and private payers such as insurers and employers, how Medicare payments currently work, how various proposals would change the law and the potential impact of those changes.

Thompson highlighted how current Medicare payment rates appropriately recognize that there are fundamental differences between patient care delivered in hospital outpatient departments compared to other settings and pushed back against several misleading statements throughout the event.

“There’s really nothing neutral about site-neutral payments,” Thompson said about pay rates for services provided in HOPDs. “The patients that are seen in hospital outpatient departments are typically sicker and much more complex, and hospital outpatient departments are held by higher standards of rules and regulations and licensure. And to some extent it’s based on a flawed sentiment that hospitals are overpaid, which is not true at all.”

The AHA last week released a myth vs. fact document pushing back on several claims some organizations continue to make related to proposals that would impose additional site-neutral payment reductions for services provided in hospital outpatient departments.