This proposed rule would update the prospective payment rates for inpatient rehabilitation facilities (IRFs) for federal fiscal year (FY) 2018 as required by the statute.  As required by section 1886(j)(5) of the Act, this rule includes the classification and weighting factors for the IRF prospective payment system’s (IRF PPS) case-mix groups and a description of the methodologies and data used in computing the prospective payment rates for FY 2018.  We are also proposing to remove the 25 percent payment penalty for inpatient rehabilitation facility patient assessment instrument (IRF-PAI) late transmissions, remove the voluntary swallowing status item (Item 27) from the IRF-PAI, revise the International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM) diagnosis codes that are used to determine presumptive compliance under the “60 percent rule,” solicit comments regarding the criteria used to classify facilities for payment under the IRF PPS, provide for automatic annual updates to presumptive methodology diagnosis code lists, use height/weight items on the IRF-PAI to determine patient body mass index (BMI) greater than 50 for cases of single-joint replacement under the presumptive methodology, and revise and update quality measures and reporting requirements under the IRF quality reporting program (QRP).
This document is scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on 05/03/2017 and available at https://federalregister.gov/d/2017-08428, and on FDsys.gov

A correction to two column headings was published on 5/15/2017 https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2017-05-15/pdf/C1-2017-08428.pdf