UPDATE: The Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) held their final public meeting on November 20, 2015, to wrap-up their discussion and submit recommendations to the Legislature for the development of an Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) to replace the current “cost-based per visit” rate methodology for Florida’s Medicaid program. AHCA’s recommendation will be to adopt a modified Enhanced Ambulatory Patient Grouping system (EAPG), which involves bundling procedures and medical visits that share similar characteristics and pays one base rate to the provider to cover all of the bundled services. The new system is expected to be implemented on July 1, 2016.

Tom Wallace, Bureau Chief of AHCA’s Medicaid Program Finance, along with members of Navigant Healthcare, the private consulting company contracted to develop the new payment system were looking at two primary model options for the OPPS: 1) the EAPG, which requires proprietary software (most likely from Navigant) that will need to be purchased by providers; and 2) the Ambulatory Payment Classification (APC) model, which is linked to Medicare’s OPPS system. By the last meeting in October, it was clear that AHCA and Navigant preferred the EAPG system to the APC model. The recommendation presented at the final meeting confirmed the agency’s preference for the EAPG model.

Significantly, the consulting company provided a simulation of how the EAPG system would pay claims to hospitals based on data collected by AHCA in accordance with the current payment system. Navigant provided charts of the top 20 hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs) that would see the biggest payment increases and decreases. (See pages 23-26 of attached workshop presentation.) According to the simulation compiled by Navigant using previous years data, the greatest increases in payments will be seen by Ocala Regional Medical Center, Bethesda Hospital East, St. Vincent’s Medical Center and Bayfront Health – St. Petersburg. The greatest decreases will be seen by Jackson Memorial Hospital, Florida Hospital, Homestead Hospital and Sacred Heart Hospital. (Full simulation results are attached here and here as Exel spreadsheets.) Approximately 18 hospitals were excluded from the simulation (including University Behavioral Hospital, Windmoor Healthcare, Emerald Coast Behavioral, UF Health Shands, UF Health Jacksonville, and others) because approximately 33-percent or more of their prior claims data were missing procedure codes. (See page 18 of attached workshop presentation for complete list.) It was suggested at the meeting that the committee reach out to the hospitals to get their procedure codes so that they can be included in the simulation.

Additional recommendations that will be provided to the Legislature include the following:

1. No outlier payments from Medicare OPPS (payments above or beyond scope of EAPG system);
2. No service line adjusters and only one provider-specific adjuster for hospitals with high Medicaid outpatient utilization (Nemours Children’s Hospital, Nicklaus Children’s Hospital and All Children’s Hospital);
3. No “charge cap” with the EAPG payment methodology to allow payment of the lessor of submitted charges or Medicaid-allowed amount;
4. Allow a 5-percent adjustment to the EAPG base rate to account for anticipated documentation and coding improvement (consistent with the value used in the first year of APR-DRG implementation); and
5. Applicable claims paid between July 1, 2016, and the date of implementation will be adjusted to apply EAPG pricing (retroactive to July 1, 2016).

AHCA will submit its recommendations to the Florida Legislature by November 30, 2015. Legislation regarding a new payment system is expected to be passed during the 2016 Session, with the new program to be effective on or about July 1, 2016.

For more information about AHCA’s development of the OPPS, please contact an attorney at Smith & Associates.