AABB Publishes Summary of CY 2024 Hospital OPPS Proposed Rule

This week, AABB released a summary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)’s proposed rule that would update Medicare payment rates and policies under the hospital outpatient prospective payment system (OPPS) and the ambulatory surgical center payment system for calendar year (CY) 2024. The proposed rule was published in the Federal Register on July 13.

CMS proposes to increase all payment rates under the OPPS hospital outpatient department fee schedule by 2.8 percent, based on the most recent updated cost reports and claims data available. AABB’s summary highlights additional proposed changes that are of particular interest to the blood and biotherapies community, including:

• a proposal to continue establishing separate payment rates for blood and blood products using a blood-specific cost-to-charge ratio methodology;
• a proposal to decrease payment rates for the majority of blood products;
• a proposal to increase the payment rates for most transfusion and laboratory services;
• proposed payment rates for chimeric antigen receptor therapy (CAR-T) cell therapies.

AABB will be submitting comments to CMS on the proposed rule. The deadline to submit comments is Sept. 11, 2023. Members who wish to share feedback or those that have additional questions are encouraged to contact AABB’s Advocacy team.