Home Health & Hospice Week

Rule still freezes many M&As. The feds have made good on a pledge to loosen a punishing new restriction on home health agency changes of ownership (CHOWs) -- but the new rule will still hit many HHAs hard. In regulations that took effect Jan. 1, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services puts new restrictions on billing for agencies in certain CHOW situations. When an agency has undergone a CHOW in the last 36 months, a second CHOW will trigger a Medicare billing deactivation that the agency can remedy only with a state or deemed accreditation survey, CMS says in Dec. 18, 2009 Transmittal No. 318 (CR 6750). Once the agency successfully completes the survey, it must send the results to its intermediary, which will reinstate the provider's billing privileges, the transmittal says. Due to a wider than usual definition of a CHOW, the change can wreak major havoc on agencies [...]