AHIMA recommends delaying severity-adjustment until FY 2009

The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) submitted its comment letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on the proposed changes to the Medicare Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS). AHIMA stated that a transition to MS-DRGs in FY 2008 might be premature:

"AHIMA recommends that implementation of a severity-adjusted DRG system be delayed until FY 2009, when the RAND report is final, the most appropriate severity-adjusted DRG system can be selected, and ample time exists for implementation."

In addition, AHIMA stated that it disagrees with the 2.4 percent "behavioral offset" cuts:

"AHIMA does not believe any payment adjustment to account for case mix increases, which are attributable to coding improvements, should be made until CMS has conducted appropriate research to determine the extent to which this would become an issue under the proposed MS-DRG system."

AHIMA also urged CMS to adopt the ICD-10-CM and ICD-10-PCS classification systems, which would enable organizations to greatly enhance the quality of present on admission data and the identification of hospital-acquired conditions.

AHIMA's full comment letter can be accessed here.