Will final APC regulations be published in ’99?
The Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) has closed the period for accepting comments on the ambulatory payment classification (APC) proposals. Whether the final APC regulation will be published in 1999 remains to be seen, although that is HCFA’s stated goal, says Dave Fee, product marketing management for 3M Health Information Systems in Salt Lake City.
HCFA extended the deadline for comments on the APC regulation until July 30. "That doesn’t give them a lot of time to go through all those comments," Fee says. However, facilities should continue to prepare for APCs because HCFA has stated recently that they could be implemented for outpatient services in hospitals and surgery centers as soon as early in the year 2000.
The latest changes to APCs were published in the June 30 Federal Register and contained "mostly technical changes" to the hospital proposed reg, Fee says. The Federal Register is available at many libraries and through an on-line database. (Web address: www.access.gpo.gov/ su_docs/)
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