Home Health & Hospice Week

Doc fix gets funding from hospitals, SNFs.

President Obama is expected shortly to sign the doc fix legislation Congress passed, and that keeps home care providers off the budget chopping block -- for a little while.

On Feb. 24, the House and Senate approved legislation that postpones a 27 percent cut to physicians' Medicare reimbursement rates, which was supposed to take effect March 1. Lawmakers had been eying home care as a funding source for the fix, but eventually they settled on hospitals, nursing homes, and fraud prevention spending as the place for cuts.

Home health agencies and hospices breathed a sigh of relief that they wouldn't see any immediate cuts. But based on budget proposals from President Obama, the Medicare Payment Advi-sory Commission and others, HHAs and even hospices will have an uphill battle in fending off further Medicare cuts in 2013.

And the American Medical Association is pushing Congress for a permanent fix to the problem. Docs face another steep cut Jan. 1 if lawmakers don't act. "We are deeply disappointed that Con-gress chose to just do another patch -- kicking the can, growing the problem and missing a clear opportunity to protect access to care for patients," AMA president Peter Carmel says in a release. Searching for that funding is sure to put the home care budget at increased risk, observers expect.