Home Health & Hospice Week

Agency frames iQIES transition and adding PoC requirements as ways they are helping HHAs.

The Trump administration’s Patients over Paperwork on-site engagement team recently turned its attention to home health, but the results may be far from what providers would hope.

“Over the course of 4 months, our team met with close to 100 home health agencies’ management, staff, and patients, as well as subject matter experts and home health association-repre­sentatives through interviews, observational visits, and listening sessions,” the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services says in a recent email.

Sounds great: “The best way for CMS to create meaningful solutions that support HHAs and the clients they serve is to understand how they operate, and how and when HHAs engage with us,” the agency says.“That’s why we’re changing the way we inform the home health policy we write by listening to HHA employees in their workplace and experiencing a ‘day in the life’ first hand.”

CMS cites one industry member who said, “Communication is key and who gets caught in the middle is the patient. Policymakers need to understand how it impacts all the way down the line.”

But: Ironically, CMS cites iQIES as a solution it has implemented to address problems it heard about OASIS complexity. One, changing the data reporting system doesn’t affect how clinicians complete the assessment tool. Two, iQIES has been riddled with problems that have held up PDGM billing and created cash flow slowdowns for struggling agencies, observers point out.

CMS also pats itself on the back for allowing therapy assistants to provide maintenance therapy, clarifying what’s required in the home health plan of care, and using “the survey process instead of the claims review process to address plan of care items accidently left out.”

Resource: See a graphic the POP team made illustrating HHA challenges at www.cms.gov/About-CMS/Story-Page/POP-Home-Health-Journey.pdf.