Home Health & Hospice Week

Per-agency outlier payments to be capped at 10 percent under latest proposal. Get ready for a little less money and a little more paperwork in 2010. In a surprise move, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services softened the blow of the wage index cut known as the budget neutrality adjustment factor (BNAF) phase-out. Instead of getting rid of the BNAF over two years, CMS will do away with the reimbursement-boosting adjustment over seven years, CMS says in its final rule for the 2010 hospice wage index. CMS will eliminate 10 percent of the BNAF in 2010, then 15 percent of it every year through 2016, according to the rule published in the Aug. 6 Federal Register. The bottom line: Starting Oct. 1, that will give hospices a 1.4 percent overall reimbursement increase -- the 2.1 percent market basket inflation update minus the 0.7 percent BNAF phase-out. Background: Originally, CMS planned [...]