Home Health & Hospice Week

Sloppy cost reports will come back to haunt the home care industry.The feds' new effort to scrutinize cost reports isn't just bad news for the home health agencies being audited, but for all HHAs.All three HHH Medicare Administrative Contractors are conducting cost report audits for the purposes of rebasing prospective payment system rates, providers across the country report. HHAs have received letters from NGS, CGS, and Palmetto GBA, as well as auditing contractor Ca-haba Safeguard Administrators, informing them that their cost reports for the 2010 fiscal year are under audit.Background: The Affordable Care Act requires home health PPS rebasing starting in 2014. Groups such as the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission have advocated starting the rebasing process, which will presumably lower payment rates, even sooner. One reason rates are expected to drop is because visit utilization has decreased significantly since PPS began in 2000.Financial expert Pat Laff with Laff Asso-ciates in [...]