Last week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced, among other things, that general acute care hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers will receive an increase in payments made to them by Medicare in 2025. The announcement also includes new policies designed to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity, increase access to care, and advance health equity.
An estimated 3,600 facilities, including general acute care hospitals, children’s hospitals, cancer hospitals, and community mental health centers, would be paid for outpatient care that they give.
(Ambulatory surgical centers provide outpatient procedures for patients who don’t need an overnight hospital stay.)
This is good news for seniors because so many surgical procedures these days don’t require overnight hospitalization, and ambulatory surgical centers have become much more common and are used more by seniors.
