Office of the Secretary August 9, 2019 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, we, the Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians (OST) are proposing to renew an information collection.

This proposed rule proposes revisions to the Medicare hospital outpatient prospective payment system (OPPS) and the Medicare ambulatory surgical center (ASC) payment system for CY 2020 based on our continuing experience with these systems. In this proposed rule, we describe the proposed changes to the amounts and factors used to determine the payment rates for Medicare services paid under the OPPS and those paid under the ASC payment system. In addition, this proposed rule would update and refine the requirements for the Hospital Outpatient Quality Reporting (OQR) Program and the ASC Quality Reporting (ASCQR) Program. In addition, in this proposed rule, we are proposing to establish requirements for all hospitals in the United States for making hospital standard charges available to the public; establish a process and requirements for prior authorization for certain covered outpatient department services; revise the conditions for coverage of organ procurement organizations; and revise the regulations to allow grandfathered children's hospitals-within- hospitals to increase the number of beds without resulting in the loss of grandfathered status. We also solicit comments on potential revisions to the laboratory date of service policy under the Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule. Finally, we solicit comments on an appropriate remedy in litigation involving our OPPS payment policy for 340B- acquired drugs, which would inform future rulemaking in the event of an adverse decision on appeal in that litigation.