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Home Health & Hospice Week

Industry Note:

CMS Wants Bigger Wage-Adjusted Portion For Home Health PPS Rates

Published on Thu Jul 26, 2012

Your stake in the wage index lottery is going to get higher next year, if a proposal from CMS becomes final. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services wants to increase the labor portion of the prospective payment system rate from the current 77.082 to 78.535 percent. "The increase in the labor-related share ... is primarily due to the increase in costs associated with contract labor," CMS explains in the 2013 PPS proposed rule published in the July 13 Federal Register."That proposed change increases the impact of any wage index changes," William Dombi with the National Association for Home Care & Hos-pice explains in a message to members. For example, an area with a wage index value of 1.2 will see a $6 per episode increase with the PPS base rate in 2013. "While this change is seemingly minor, it will add up will the volume of episodes," Dombi says. [...]
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