OIG recommends CMS recalculate ESRD payments

HHS's Office of Inspector General recommended that CMS account for acquisition costs of drugs when annually recalculating the Medicare bundled payment rate for end-stage renal disease treatments. CMS annually updates the prescription drug portion of the ESRD payment rate based on the Producer Price Index (PPI) as a predictor of cost changes. However, OIG said PPI -- which is published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and measures the average change over time in the prices of groups of commodities -- is not accurate for prescription drugs. The acquisition costs of ESRD drugs also can vary by dialysis center. ...