Medicare moves to allow more outpatient medical procedures
The Trump administration is opening the floodgates for more surgeries to be done in outpatient facilities like ambulatory surgery centers, proposing a Medicare policy that could accelerate the shift away from hospital-based care.
The administration is aiming to scrap Medicare’s list of 1,700 procedures that the program will only pay for in inpatient settings. Medicare officials unveiled their decision to eliminate the so-called inpatient only list in a proposed rule on Tuesday, reprising an effort from the first Trump administration.
The agency had already removed common surgeries like hip and knee replacements from the list in recent years, but it said that getting rid of it entirely will give patients more choices and allow doctors to use their professional judgment to decide where procedures should take place.
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