Home Health & Hospice Week

March 17 was the official deadline.

Depending on where you operate, you may have seen a little or a lot of action for your state to come into compliance with the final Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) regulation.

Background: Way back in 2014, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services published the rule that “set forth new requirements for several Medicaid authorities under which states may provide home and community-based long-term services and supports,” CMS says on its Medicaid HCBS webpage. “The regulations enhance the quality of HCBS and provide additional protections to individuals that receive services under these Medicaid authorities,” CMS adds.

March 17 “marked the end of the transition period for implementation of the Medicaid Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) settings regulation,” CMS and the Administration for Community Living said in a joint announcement released on that day. “Effective today, all states must be fully compliant with the regulation’s requirements to uphold specified basic rights,” they said. However, “through time-limited corrective action plans, [states] have additional time to fully comply with the remaining criteria impacted by the COVID-19 public health emergency,” they allowed.

Many states are on board. For example, “Hawai‘i has joined the rest of the nation in implementing sweeping changes that enable residents with disabilities and older adults to live and participate fully in their communities,” the state’s Department of Health says in a March 22 release.

“A number of states including Hawai‘i, are investing resources to address the direct-care workforce crisis, essential to ensuring people have access to the services they need,” the release explains. “Because low wages make it very hard to recruit and retain the professionals who provide critical services, during the pandemic, many states increased payment rates and targeted those increases to apply to wages for direct-support professionals.”

More information about the regulation is at www.medicaid. gov/medicaid/home-community-based-services/guidance/ home-community-based-services-final-regulation/index.html.