Securing Access to Care for Seniors in Critical Condition Act of 2025

119 HR 1924 IH: Securing Access to Care for Seniors in Critical Condition Act of 2025 U.S. House of Representatives 2025-03-06 text/xml EN Pursuant to Title 17 Section 105 of the United States Code, this file is not subject to copyright protection and is in the public domain. I 119th CONGRESS 1st Session H. R. 1924 IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES March 6, 2025 Mr. Hern of Oklahoma (for himself, Mr. Boyle of Pennsylvania , Mr. Joyce of Pennsylvania , Mrs. Miller of West Virginia , Mr. Smucker , and Ms. Tenney ) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Ways and Means A BILL To amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to establish a new criterion for the nonapplication of site-neutral payments to long-term care hospitals under the Medicare program. 1. Short title This Act may be cited as the Securing Access to Care for Seniors in Critical Condition Act of 2025 . 2. Establishing a new criterion for the nonapplication of site-neutral payments to long-term care hospitals under the Medicare program Section 1886(m)(6)(A) of the Social Security Act ( 42 U.S.C. 1395ww(m)(6)(A) ) is amended— (1) in clause (ii)(I), by striking or the ventilator criterion under clause (iv) and inserting , the ventilator criterion under clause (iv), or the high acuity criterion described in clause (v) ; and (2) by adding at the end the following new clause: (v) High acuity criterion The criterion specified in this clause (in this paragraph referred to as the high acuity criterion ) for a discharge from a long-term care hospital in a fiscal year is that— (I) the discharge was assigned to a Medicare-Severity-Long-Term-Care-Diagnosis-Related-Group (MS-LTC-DRG) with a relative weight for such fiscal year that was equal to or greater than 0.8; and (II) the discharge occurred on or after October 1, 2026. .