Home Health & Hospice Week

Copays, pay updates and hospice in SNFs feature in advisory body's latest suggestions. Home health agencies aren't going to have an easy time fighting off a copayment proposal this legislative session, and a new list of cost-cutting suggestions from an influential advisory body to Congress won't help. In its September meeting, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission proposed a set of draft recommendations with a host of HHA and hospice items. The list includes recommendations MedPAC has made in previous reports to Congress (Tier I) and new suggestions (Tier II). The proposals aim to offset a fix to the physician sustainable growth rate reimbursement problem. One of the biggest money-generators in the Tier I list is an HHA copay, which MedPAC last year tentatively suggested be set at $150 for episodes with no preceding hospital stay. Such a copay would strip $2 billion from Medicare spending over the next five years [...]