Medicare Hospital Inpatient Device-Intensive Payment Policy
February 13, 2025
Medicare鈥檚 fee-for-service (FFS) payment system includes payment policies that support providers鈥� use of innovative medical device technologies. The continued evolution of these policies is necessary to keep pace with current and future medical innovation. In this report, 红领巾瓜报 summarizes models testing the implementation of a newly proposed policy for the hospital inpatient system which aims to eliminate systemic bias that may slow hospitals鈥� adoption of innovative technologies. 红领巾瓜报 concludes that targeted policies that eliminate the use of the hospital wage index to standardize device costs can result in more accurate reimbursement for hospitals and increase beneficiary access to innovative technologies.