On July 1st, 2018, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a proposed rule which includes several changes to the home health benefit for 2019 and beyond. The public comment period closes this Friday August 31, 2018, at 11:59 p.m. As of this blog posting, 760 comments have been submitted to CMS which is encouraging, but far from the more than 1,300 comments submitted last year in response to the HHGM proposal which was ultimately withdrawn.
You can view the HCA’s written comments here and can download the word document here.
You may submit your own comments to CMS here.
Here are some of the key changes proposed, and an overview of HCA’s response:
Home Health Wage Index Changes
- The 2019 proposed payment rates increase by 2.1% which represents a $400 million increase.
- HCA of MA has long expressed concerns to CMS over inequities in how the wage index is calculated for home health agencies compared to hospitals. HCA urges CMS to adjust the 2019 home health agency wage index to reflect a policy to limit the wage index disparity between provider types within a given CBSA.
Proposed Patient Driven Groupings Model (PDGM) for CY 2020
- Implementation: As the proposed PDGM would mark a major change in the way home health agencies will be reimbursed, the HCA urges CMS to delay implementation by one year to ensure that there is no disruption in access to services for beneficiaries and evaluate the accuracy of the model and its effect.
- LUPA Thresholds: CMS proposes to set the LUPA visit threshold at the 10th percentile for each payment group. HCA believes this is complex and will complicate the care planning process for home health agencies. HCA urges CMS to retain the current LUPA thresholds and revisit them in future years.
- Behavioral Assumptions: CMS proposed three ‘behavioral assumptions’ in the PDGM totaling -6.42%. However, these assumptions are not based in data or evidence. HCA believes that two of the three assumptions already exist in the current PPS methodology including; that agencies are already incentivized to both report the highest playing diagnosis codes and to develop and deliver plans of care that exceed the LUPA threshold. This could result in an over estimated impact of behavioral assumptions and the HCA urges CMS to eliminate the Clinical Group Coding and LUPA threshold assumptions.
- Split percentage payment approach: HCA believes that changing from a 60 to 30 day billing period will be very disruptive to agencies’ operations and increase back-office costs. Therefore, HCA urges CMS to continue the split payment approach at the current 60/40 and 50/50 splits for early and late periods, respectively, to give agencies cash flow breathing room.
- Certification and Re-certification of Patient Eligibility: HCA has long advocated for regulatory language to align with sub-regulatory guidance as it relates to documentation of the patient’s eligibility. HCA is encouraged by CMS’ proposal to eliminate the requirement that the physician provide an estimate of how much longer skilled services are required and we request that CMS consider revisions to the physician’s burden of the F2F encounter as a condition of payment.
- Remote Patient Monitoring: HCA strongly supports the proposal to recognize remote patient monitoring costs as an administrative cost on the HHA cost report. HCA does recommend however that CMS remove the regulation that does not allow remote patient monitoring to be used as a substitute for in-person home health services.
- Home Health Value Based Purchasing Model: HCA has long supported the HHVBP model aiming to improve quality by giving HHAs incentives to provide better quality care. However, HCA urges CMS to modify the HHVBP to recognize stabilization in the scoring because in many cases, stabilization (instead of improvement) is an appropriate goal for some patients.
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