Home Health & Hospice Week
MedPAC Calls For Lower Payments To HHAs
Commission wants to repeal the Medicare SGR, too.
You’ll have lower home health payments and more oversight, if the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission gets its way. In a Dec. 6 meeting, MedPAC commissioners reiterated their recommendation from 2011 that Congress repeal the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) and replace it with 10 years of statutory payment updates, according to the National Association for Home Care & Hospice.
MedPAC also recommends that Congress pay for the SGR fix by freezing primary care payments and reducing payments for all other specialties. This strategy would increase beneficiaries’ out-of-pocket costs while reducing payments to home health agencies, hospitals and other providers.
The Department of Health and Human Services Secretary and Office of Inspector General should initiate medical reviews in locations with aberrant home health utilization, MedPAC also advises. Additionally, HHS should revise the home health case-mix system, so that payments are based on patient characteristics for therapy and non-therapy services, not based on the number of therapy visits.
HHS should also begin a two-year rebasing of home health rates, eliminating the 2012 market basket update, MedPAC says. The Commission’s full annual report to Congress is due out in March 2013.
Home Health & Hospice Week
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