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what covers the measure of medicare spending per beneficiary (mspb).

by Mellie Kulas Published 2 years ago Updated 1 year ago
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The Medicare Spending Per Beneficiary (MSPB) clinician measure assesses the cost to Medicare as a result of services performed by an individual clinician during an MSPB episode, which comprises the period immediately prior to, during, and following a patient’s hospital stay.1 An MSPB episode includes all Medicare Part A and Part B claims falling in the episode “window,” specifically claims with a start date between 3 days prior to a hospital admission2 (also known as the “index admission” for the episode) through 30 days after hospital discharge.

Specifically, the MSPB measure assesses Medicare Part A and Part B payments for services provided by hospitals during an episode that spans from three days prior to an inpatient hospital admission through 30 days after discharge. The payments included in this measure are price-standardized and risk-adjusted.

Full Answer

How is Mspb calculated?

The MSPB Measure is calculated using the following steps: (1) standardize Medicare payments included in MSPB episode costs, (2) calculate expected payment-standardized episode costs, (3) calculate risk-adjusted MSPB Amount, (4) calculate the specialty-adjusted expected cost, and (5) calculate the specialty-adjusted ...

What does Mspb stand for in medical terms?

Medicare-Spending-per-BeneficiaryAbbreviations: MSPB is Medicare-Spending-per-Beneficiary; HVBP is Hospital Value-based Purchasing; and SNF is skilled nursing facility.

What is Medicare spending?

Historical NHE, 2020: Medicare spending grew 3.5% to $829.5 billion in 2020, or 20 percent of total NHE. Medicaid spending grew 9.2% to $671.2 billion in 2020, or 16 percent of total NHE.

Is Medicare discretionary spending?

Discretionary spending does not include expenses for Medicare, Medicare, TANF, and other mandatory programs. By law, these are fixed expenses of the government budget.

Does Medicare cover all health care expenses?

En español | Medicare covers some but not all of your health care costs. Depending on which plan you choose, you may have to share in the cost of your care by paying premiums, deductibles, copayments and coinsurance. The amount of some of these payments can change from year to year.

What is the single largest expense item for a health care delivery system?

Half of these expenditures went toward labor costs, including physicians' and nurses' salaries. But the most rapidly growing category of expense was goods and services—pharmaceuticals (purchased by providers), medical devices, and other items, as well as services like accounting and engineering.

What is MSPB in Medicare?

The MSPB Clinician measure assesses the cost to Medicare of services provided to a patient during an MSPB Clinician episode (hereafter referred to as the “episode”), which comprises the period immediately prior to, during, and following the patient’s hospital stay. An episode includes Medicare Part A and Part B claims with a start date between 3 days prior to a hospital admission (also known as the “index admission” for the episode) through 30 days after hospital discharge, excluding a defined list of services that are unlikely to be influenced by the clinician’s care decisions and are, thus, considered unrelated to the index admission. In all supplemental documentation, the term “cost” generally means the standardized 1 Medicare allowed amount. 2

What is the numerator for MSPB?

The numerator for the MSPB Clinician measure is the sum of the ratio of payment-standardized observed to expected episode costs for all episodes attributed to the clinician group , as identified by a unique Medicare Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN), or to the clinician, as identified by a unique TIN and National Provider Identifier pair (TIN-NPI). The sum is then multiplied by the national average payment-standardized observed episode cost to generate a dollar figure.

What is MSPB in healthcare?

MSPB is standardized for geographic payment differences such as geographic practice and wage index cost differences. The MSPB is also patient risk adjusted for severity of illness, patient age, and enrollment status indicators. There are three spending periods in an episode of care. 1.

What does 1.1 mean in MSPB?

An MSPB measure of 1.1 indicates that the organization had average risk-adjusted spending levels (which are 10 percent higher than the median MSPB episode).

What is MSPB PAC?

The MSPB-PAC measures evaluate PAC providers’ resource use relative to the resource use of the national median PAC provider of the same type. There is a separate MSPB-PAC measure for SNF, HHA, LTCH, and IRF providers; within each measure, a given PAC provider is only compared to other providers in the same setting (i.e., in the MSPB-PAC SNF measure, a SNF provider is compared to all SNF providers). Specifically, the measures assess the Medicare spending performed by the PAC provider and other healthcare providers during an MSPB-PAC episode.

How long does MSPB-PAC last?

MSPB-PAC episodes end according to the rules described in Section 3.1.2, above: across all settings, the episode ends 30 days after the end of the treatment period . The full payment for all claims that begin within the episode window is counted toward the episode, to maintain consistency with the hospital MSPB measure and to fairly assign payment to the episode for Medicare claims paid on a prospective payment system, regardless of their length.

What is the numerator for a PAC provider?

The numerator for a PAC provider’s MSPB-PAC measure is the MSPB-PAC Amount . The MSPB-PAC Amount is the average risk-adjusted episode spending across all episodes for the attributed provider, multiplied by the national average episode spending level for all PAC providers in the same setting.

What is MSPB in Medicare?

The Medicare Spending Per Beneficiary (MSPB) clinician measure assesses the cost to Medicare as a result of services performed by an individual clinician during an MSPB episode, which comprises the period immediately prior to, during, and following a patient’s hospital stay.1 An MSPB episode includes all Medicare Part A and Part B claims falling in the episode “window,” specifically claims with a start date between 3 days prior to a hospital admission2 (also known as the “index admission” for the episode) through 30 days after hospital discharge.

How to calculate MSPB?

The MSPB measure is calculated for each TIN-NPI or TIN by (i) calculating the ratio of standardized observed episode costs to winsorized expected episode costs and (ii) multiplying the average cost ratio across episodes for each TIN-NPI or TIN by the national average episode cost. This method of cost ratio calculation allows for comparison of differences in observed and expected costs at the level of each individual episode before comparison at the provider level. The content of each cost calculation depends on the desired reporting level, as noted in the following steps.

Why are statistical outliers excluded from MSPB?

Statistical outliers are excluded from MSPB measure calculation to mitigate the effect of high- and low-cost episodes on each TIN-NPI or TIN’s MSPB measure score. Step 4.1 below describes the winsorization on the lower bound of expected episode costs, and Step 4.2 explains the process for excluding outlier episodes.

How long does an MSPB episode last?

An MSPB episode includes all Medicare Part A and Part B claims with a start date between 3 days prior to a hospital admission (“index admission”) and 30 days after hospital discharge. The episode exclusions described in Section 2.3 are applied to arrive at the final population of index admissions.

What is Medicare transforming?

To advance this transformation, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) provides financial incentives to clinicians based on their performance on selected quality measures as well as cost measures.

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Introduction

Measure Description

  • The MSPB Clinician measure assesses the cost to Medicare of services provided to a patient during an MSPB Clinician episode (hereafter referred to as the “episode”), which comprises the period immediately prior to, during, and following the patient’s hospital stay. An episode includes Medicare Part A and Part B claims with a start date between 3 da...
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Measure Rationale

  • MSPB Clinician is an important means of measuring Medicare spending, as health expenditures continue to increase in the United States. Total health care spending is estimated to have increased by 4.6% in 2017, reaching $3.5 trillion, and spending for Medicare, which is still predominantly paid on a fee-for-service (FFS) basis, grew by 3.6%, reaching $672.1 billion.3In 20…
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Patient Exclusion Criteria

  • Patients’ episodes are excluded from the measure population if the patients meet any of the following conditions: 1. They were not enrolled in both Medicare Parts A and B for the entirety of the lookback period plus episode window. 2. They were enrolled in a private Medicare health plan (e.g., a Medicare Advantage or a Medicare private FFS plan) for any part of the lookback period …
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Measure numerator

  • The numerator for the MSPB Clinician measure is the sum of the ratio of payment-standardized observed to expected episode costs for all episodes attributed to the clinician group, as identified by a unique Medicare Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN), or to the clinician, as identified by a unique TIN and National Provider Identifier pair (TIN-NPI). The sum is then multiplied by the nati…
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Measure Denominator

  • The denominator for the MSPB Clinician measure is the total number of episodes attributed to a clinician or clinician group.
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Data Sources

  • The MSPB Clinician measure uses the following data sources: 1. Medicare Parts A and B claims data from the Common Working File (CWF) 2. Enrollment Data Base (EDB) 3. Long Term Care Minimum Data Set (LTC MDS)
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Care Settings

  • The MSPB Clinician cost measure can be triggered at acute care facility hospitals. -------------------- 1 - Claim payments are standardized to account for differences in Medicare payments for the same service(s) across Medicare providers. Payment standardized costs remove the effect of differences in Medicare payment among health care providers that are the result of differences i…
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