This month, the Center for Medicare Advocacy (CMA) released an article entitled, “
It’s Time to Repeal the 3-Day Inpatient Hospital Requirement for Medicare Skilled Nursing Facility Coverage.” The author, Toby Edelman, noted, “When Medicare was enacted in 1965, it limited coverage in a skilled nursing facility under Part A to beneficiaries who had been inpatients in an acute care hospital for at least three consecutive days before their discharge to a SNF. The benefit, called extended care, was viewed, literally, as a limited extension of a hospital stay. Since the average length of stay in an acute care hospital for a patient age 65 or older in 1965 was more than 13 days, most hospitalized Medicare beneficiaries had no difficulty satisfying the three-day inpatient requirement. Times have changed. Congress should repeal the three-day inpatient requirement for multiple reasons.” These reasons can be found in the article
here.