Medicare program; changes to the hospital outpatient prospective payment system for calendar year 2002. Final rule.

This final rule revises the Medicare hospital outpatient prospective payment system to implement applicable statutory requirements, including relevant provisions of the Medicare, Medicaid,and SCHIP Benefits Improvement and Protection Act of 2000, and changes arising from our continuing experience with this system. In addition, it describes changes to the amounts and factors used to determine the payment rates for Medicare hospital outpatient services paid under the prospective payment system. This final rule also announces a uniform reduction of 68.9 percent to be applied to each of the transitional pass-through payments.These changes are applicable to services furnished on or after January 1, 2002.