Medicare Program; Inpatient Rehabilitation Facility Prospective Payment System for Federal Fiscal Year 2019

This final rule updates the prospective payment rates for inpatient rehabilitation facilities (IRFs) for federal fiscal year (FY) 2019. As required by the Social Security Act (the Act), this final rule includes the classification and weighting factors for the IRF prospective payment system's (PPS) case-mix groups and a description of the methodologies and data used in computing the prospective payment rates for FY 2019. This final rule also alleviates administrative burden for IRFs by removing the Functional Independence Measure (FIM\TM\) instrument and associated Function Modifiers from the IRF Patient Assessment Instrument (IRF-PAI) beginning in FY 2020 and revises certain IRF coverage requirements to reduce the amount of required paperwork in the IRF setting beginning in FY 2019. Additionally, this final rule incorporates certain data items located in the Quality Indicators section of the IRF-PAI into the IRF case-mix classification system using analysis of 2 years of data beginning in FY 2020. For the IRF Quality Reporting Program (QRP), this final rule adopts a new measure removal factor, removes two measures from the IRF QRP measure set, and codifies a number of program requirements in our regulations.