News-At-A-Glance: CMS Proposes New Metropolitan Areas

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has proposed to implement new metropolitan areas (MAs) in the Inpatient Prospective Payment System Proposed Rule published in the Federal Register on April 30. The new MAs would, if adopted as proposed, profoundly affect many aspects of Medicare hospital payments, according to an article published in the National Law Review May 28. According to the article, the new MAs were approved by the Office of Management and Budget in February 2013 and are based on 2010 census data. These MAs are used by a wide variety of federal programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, for various purposes including payment decisions. CMS classifies counties into urban or rural areas based on the MA information. Many providers, including hospitals, receive payments based on whether they are in an urban or rural MA. If the proposed rule is finalized, the new MAs would take effect Oct. 1, 2015. Hospitals and other providers, including hospital laboratories, should carefully examine the new proposed MAs and prepare for the effects of their implementation.