Home Health & Hospice Week

The findings of a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services demonstration project on bundling payments may be good for home care providers. "Evidence supports the potential for development of a common payment system for the three inpatient [post acute care] settings: LTCHs, IRFs, and SNFs," says the CMS report on the Post Acute Care Payment Reform Demonstration. "Evidence supports modeling home health routine service use separately from the other PAC settings." Unique: "The pattern of resource intensity in the home health setting is significantly different than seen in the three inpatient PAC settings," CMS notes in the report. "This may be due in part to the different nature of providing care and staffing in a home based setting compared to an inpatient setting." The demo used the CARE tool to assess patients across all care settings. Even though a post acute payment system covering all the settings may not work, [...]