On March 18, 2014, the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees introduced a bill entitled “Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation Act of 2014” (IMPACT Act). This bill, should it be signed into law, will require post-acute care providers (e.g. skilled nursing facilities) to furnish standard assessment data in order to improve the efficiency of Medicare payments.

The current draft of the bill would require the assessment and reporting of patient data such as functional status, medical condition, and cognitive condition. The Act would also create systems to measure patient skin integrity, incidence of major falls, Medicare spending per beneficiary, and preventable hospital admissions/readmissions.

Once the bill becomes law, it will require skilled nursing facilities to begin quality reporting at the start of the 2019 fiscal year. Facilities that fail to report the necessary data under the Act would have 2 percentage points docked from their Medicare rates.

To view a copy of the current draft of the IMPACT Act, click here.