Home Health & Hospice Week

Be sure you pay back any funds that don’t go to qualifying expenses.

You may feel more comfortable accepting the terms and conditions for the CARES Act Provider Relief Fund money you received after reading one of the many frequently asked questions on the program added this month.

Question: “In order to accept a payment, must the provider have already incurred eligible expenses and losses higher than the Provider Relief Fund payment received?” says a question added to the Provider Relief Fund FAQ webpage June 8.

Answer: “No. Providers do not need to be able to prove, at the time they accept a Provider Relief Fund payment, that prior and/or future lost revenues and increased expenses attributable to COVID-19 (excluding those covered by other sources of reimbursement) meet or exceed their Provider Relief Fund payment,” HHS clarifies. “Instead, HHS expects that providers will only use Provider Relief Fund payments for permissible purposes.”

Be careful: “If, at the conclusion of the pandemic, providers have leftover Provider Relief Fund money that they cannot expend on permissible expenses or losses, then they will return this money to HHS,” the FAQ says. “HHS will provide directions in the future about how to return unused funds.”

And providers had better be sure to keep track. “HHS reserves the right to audit Provider Relief Fund recipients in the future and collect any Relief Fund amounts that were used inappropriately,” the department warns. The HHS Office of Inspector General recently announced that it will audit HHS’ distribution of and accounting for funds (see Eli’s HCW, Vol. 29, No. 21).