Home Health & Hospice Week

Don’t be surprised by the new $631 fee associated with them.

If your revalidation date came and went under the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency and you’re wondering when the request will come, the answer is probably pretty soon.

Why? “We have slowly begun to resume some of these activities” for enrollment and revalidation that were waived under the PHE, a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services official noted in the Nov. 10 Home Health Open Door Forum.

For example, requiring fingerprints and application fees is now back as of Nov. 1, for enrollment applications received on or after that date. (Reminder: “Fingerprint-based background checks are generally completed on people with a 5 percent or greater ownership interest in a provider or supplier that falls under the high risk category,” which includes HHAs, CMS says in a Frequently Asked Question set about the resumption at www.cms.gov/files/document/provider-enrollment-relief-faqs-covid-19.pdf.)

And Medicare Administrative Contractors have sent out a first batch of revalidation request letters with a due date of Jan. 31, 2022, the CMS staffer reported.

Tip: You can look up your revalidation dates with the tool at https://data.cms.gov/tools/medicare-revalidation-list, the speaker offered.

Watch out — the fee for submitting enrollment and revalidation applications is going up come Jan. 1. “Effective January 1 - December 31, 2022, the application fee is $631,” CMS says in a message to providers. That’s up from this year’s $599 fee, CMS notes in an Oct. 25 Federal Register notice about the update at www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2021- 10-25/pdf/2021-23143.pdf.