The biggest change in 24 years to Medicare’s DRG payment system is expected take effect October 1, 2007. Medicare is planning to replace the current DRG payment system with new severity-adjusted DRGs to better categorize hospital patients and to more accurately predict resource use. The new Medicare Severity DRG (MS-DRG) payment system will have an all-encompassing impact on your hospital’s revenue cycle. 

• How will you react to Medicare's proposed 2.4% reduction in payment rates?
• Will your revenue increase or will you report losses?
• How will HIM handle these changes?
• How will you prepare staff for the new documentation requirements?

Highlights of the changes to the DRG system

• Pediatric, Complication or Comorbidity (CC) and other diagnosis-driven complexity splits have been eliminated.
• The new system consists of 334 base DRGs that are split into 1, 2 or 3 levels of severity.
• There are 1,678 new CCs and 272 new Major Complication or Comorbidities (MCCs).  Also, CMS removed 426 codes altogether from the CC list.
• Documentation of medical records will need to change to properly capture the underlying CC/MCCs.

Don’t go into October with blinders on. Get the critical information you need—right now—to prepare for MS-DRGs.