Home Health & Hospice Week

Physician focus may translate to quick HHA changes too.

Don't get too used to the 2006 payment increase you've started seeing for home health episodes ending Jan. 1 and later.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has indicated in a Jan. 6 letter to congressional leaders that it is ready to change Medicare payment rates within two days of pending budget legislation becoming law. And CMS automatically will reprocess all the physician claims paid at the current 4.4 percent cut rate when the legislation bringing payment levels to a 0 percent inflation update is passed.

However, the letter sent to Reps. Bill Thomas (R-CA) and Dan Burton (R-IN) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) addresses only physician payments. It remains unclear how fast CMS would institute payment changes for home health agencies, including a rollback of the current 2.8 percent increase for all HHAs and a 5 percent rural add-on for agencies serving rural patients.

President Bush is urging the House to finish work on the budget reconciliation package quickly when it reconvenes Jan. 31.

HHAs' hopes of getting the 2006 payment freeze reversed in the House may be further weakened by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission's final vote to recommend yet another pay freeze for 2007 rates. MedPAC approved the recommendation in its Jan. 10 meeting.

The influential advisory body to Congress proposed the 2007 recommendation in December (see Eli's HCW, Vol. XIV, No. 44). • The U.S. Supreme Court may soon weigh in on overtime rules for certain home care workers.

The U.S. Solicitor General recently recommended the Court accept an appeal and reverse a lower court's ruling in In Long Island Care at Home, LTD., et al v. Evelyn Coke, reports the National Association for Home Care & Hospice.

At issue in the case is whether the federal labor regulation exempting HHAs' home care aide services from overtime compensation requirements is invalid. "The submission by the Solicitor General gives great hope to efforts to get the Supreme Court to hear the case," NAHC cheers.

• The nation's largest home health company is about to get substantially larger.

Gentiva Health Services Inc. has agreed to buy The Healthfield Group Inc. for $454 million in cash and stock. The transaction will push Gentiva's annual revenues past the $1 billion mark, the Melville, NY-based company says.

Atlanta-based Healthfield has 130 locations in eight southeastern states plus Michigan, Gentiva says in a release. Healthfield offers home nursing, hospice, durable medical and respiratory equipment, and infusion therapy services.

"Our combination with Healthfield will substantially extend our ... geographic reach in the southeast, and include significant operations in four key states with certificate of need requirements," Gentiva CEO Ron Malone says in the release. "It will make Gentiva one of the nation's 10 [...]