ASE Submits Comments on the FY 2027 Inpatient Prospective Payment System Proposed Rule

On June 5, ASE submitted comments to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on the Fiscal Year (FY) 2027 Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) proposed rule. ASE recognized the proposed 2.4 percent IPPS operating payment update as a meaningful step while urging CMS to monitor whether it offsets the cost pressures hospitals face in maintaining cardiovascular imaging infrastructure and workforce. The letter’s central concern is CMS’s proposal to eliminate the alternative New Technology Add-on Payment (NTAP) pathway for FDA Breakthrough Device Designation technologies, which ASE urges CMS to withdraw, warning that it could impair patient access to innovative cardiovascular technologies, including three echocardiography-dependent devices currently under review. ASE also encouraged CMS to ensure MS-DRG classifications capture the complexity of imaging-guided and structural heart procedures, to address the absence of cardiovascular imaging from the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting framework, and to adopt practical interoperability policies and reduce duplicative reporting burden.

This rule directly affects the hospitals where ASE members practice and the frameworks governing how echocardiography services are delivered and adopted. ASE participates to ensure CMS payment and quality policy recognizes the clinical value of cardiovascular imaging and preserves patient access to the innovative technologies that depend on it.