Home Health & Hospice Week

Demand for in-home care services is high, but will the payment for such services be there? Action by Congress may soon help determine that issue.

Reminder: The American Rescue Plan enacted in March included a one-year, 10 point increase in the federal share of Medicaid spending for HCBS, worth about $11 to $12 billion this year (see HCW by AAPC, Vol. XXX, No. 10). Then in his American Jobs Plan proposal, President Biden called on Congress to boost funding for Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) by a whopping $400 billion in coming years (see HCW by AAPC, Vol. XXX, No. 13).

Now that Congress is getting down to business to hammer out the $3.5 trillion domestic spending bill, that HCBS funding is on the chopping block. The House Committee on Energy & Commerce passed its version of the Build Back Better Act with only $190 billion in additional HCBS funding, even though Committee Chair Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) described the HCBS “investments” as “long overdue” in a Sept. 15 release. And that figure is up from an earlier, rumored $150 billion, notes law firm Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney in online analysis of the budget negoti­ations.

If there was any doubt about home care’s popularity with Americans, a new poll commissioned by The Partnership for Quality Home Healthcare and conducted by Morning Consult erases it. Ninety-four percent of Medicare beneficiaries polled in August said they would prefer to receive post-hospital short-term health care at home, PQHH and the National Association for Home Care & Hospice say in a release.

Further, 85 percent of adults said it should be a high priority for the federal government to expand Medicare coverage for at-home health care, the poll found. And 90 percent of those over age 65 said this should be a high priority for the federal government, according to the release.

Detailed poll results are in the 40-page file at http://pqhh.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/PQHH-Logo_Home-Health_Final_8.19.pdf.