Hospital Outpatient Payment

NABH is pressing CMS on the CY 2027 OPPS proposed rule, with comments centered on how hospital outpatient payment policy affects behavioral health access, provider financial stability, and alignment with broader Medicare value-based care goals. The immediate tension for ACOs, health systems, and payer partners is whether OPPS updates will adequately support outpatient behavioral health capacity and integration—or deepen site-of-care and access pressures that undermine population health and total-cost-of-care performance (NABH comments).