Home Health & Hospice Week

Nearly 10 months after proposing it, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has finalized a move to remove “a state’s ability to divert portions of Medicaid provider payments to third parties outside of the scope of what the statute allows.” The effect is to disallow automatic payments to unions from home care workers’ wages.

After taking into account more than 7,000 comments on the proposed rule (see Eli’s HCW, Vol. XXVII, No. 28), “CMS is finalizing the rule to remove this impermissible exception,” it says in a release. “State Medicaid programs are responsible for ensuring that taxpayer dollars are dedicated to providing healthcare services for low-income, vulnerable Americans and are not diverted in ways that do not comply with federal law,” CMS Adminis­trator Seema Verma says in the release.

The rule doesn’t affect workers employed by home health agencies, but rather individual providers, the National Association for Home Care & Hospice points out.

The rule is in the May 6 Federal Register at www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2019-05-06/pdf/2019-09118.pdf.