Home Health & Hospice Week

The federal bill that aims to stave off the proposed 7.69 percent behavioral adjustment reduction to Medicare home health payment rates in 2023 has gained more momentum.

Reps. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.) and Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) on July 28 introduced a companion bill in the House, H.R. 8581. The Senate bill, S. 4605, was introduced on July 25 (see HCW by AAPC, Vol. XXXI, No. 27).

“The COVID-19 pandemic put a spotlight on the importance of home health services which are a lifeline for so many Alabama seniors and people with disabilities. It is imperative that we continue to protect home health services from cuts,” Sewell says in a release.

“As we have learned from the coronavirus pandemic, home health services have proven to be invaluable for seniors in my district and across the country,” says Buchanan in the release. “We know, when given the option, patients overwhelmingly prefer to receive care where they are most at ease — in the comfort of their own homes,” he notes.

“The delivery of home health services faces a serious threat due to a proposed policy that would make a permanent cut to home health care of 7.69 percent beginning in 2023, which totals $1.33 billion,” the release stresses. “It also proposes to ‘clawback’ $2 billion in a temporary adjustment to home health payments for services provided to Medicare beneficiaries during the first two years of the COVID-19 public health emergency.”

The legislation “restricts the ability of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to impose these severe reductions for three years, until 2026, to enable the home health industry to continue to work with CMS on a fairer and more equitable budget neutrality methodology that is the underpinning for CMS’ reasoning behind these proposed reductions,” the release explains.