Home Health & Hospice Week

Medicare needs to give providers a little more time to digest its latest Medicaid rule. So say industry representatives to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

In a May 31 letter to CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the National Association for Home Care & Hospice, the Home Care Association of America, and the Partnership for Medicaid Home-Based Care ask the agency for “an extension of at least 60 days of the comment period for the proposed rule, Medicaid Program: Ensuring Access to Medicaid Services.” Comments were due June 3.

“Amongst other new and historical proposals, the proposed rule includes an unprecedented recommendation to mandate thresholds on payments for services,” the groups say, referring to the requirement that at least 80 percent of Medicaid payments for personal care, homemaker, and home health aide services be spent on compensation for direct care workers (see HHHW by AAPC, Vol. XXXII, No. 16).

“It will take our organizations immense time and effort to collect the data to inform CMS’s final decisions in a comprehensive, thoughtful manner,” they contends. And “simultaneously, our provider members are just weeks into working with states on impacts from the end of the Public Health Emergency and are dealing with significant work that is in progress around redeterminations and other waiver changes and impacts,” the letter adds.

“The potential and implications of this proposal are far too important to rush,” NAHC, HCAA, and PMHBC say. “We respectfully request extended time to sufficiently provide meaningful comment.”

At press time, CMS hadn't responded to the request.