Home Health & Hospice Week

Two new pieces of legislation could af-fect home care providers. The Securing Access Via Excellence (SAVE) Medicare Home Health Act of 2014 (H.R. 5110) would repeal CMS’ rebasing rule starting Jan. 1, 2015 and seek to offset the cost of repeal by establishing a home health value-based purchasing program beginning in 2019, reports the National Association for Home Care & Hospice. 

And earlier in the legislative session, Rep. Ralph Hall (R-Texas) introduced the Medicare Home Health Rebasing Relief and Reassessment Act (H.R. 4625), NAHC notes. It would suspend rebasing for a year and require CMS to consider alternative rebasing methodologies.

Meanwhile, a bill aiming to secure standardization of patient data across post-acute settings is working its way through Congress. The Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation (IM-PACT) Act of 2014 (H.R. 4994/S. 2553) “would instruct the U.S. Department of Health and Hu-man Services (HHS) to standardize patient assessment data, quality, and resource use measures for PAC providers including home health agencies (HHAs), skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), inpatient rehabilitation facilities (IRFs), and long-term care hospitals (LTCHs),” the American Physical Thera-py Association says in a release.

Areas covered if the Act passes into law include standardized patient assessment data at times of admission and discharge; new quality measures including functional status, skin integrity, medication reconciliation, incidence of major falls, and patient preference regarding treatment and discharge; Medicare spending per beneficiary; discharge to community; and hospitalization rates of potentially preventable readmissions.