Home Health & Hospice Week

Don’t leave your cost report preparation until the last minute this year, because you may find the updated cost report form delays your filing. That’s the advice from consulting and cost reporting firm The Health Group in Morgantown, West Virginia.

Reminder: Last October, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released the new Home Health Agency Cost Report, Form CMS-1728-20, which was effective for cost reporting years beginning on or after Jan. 1, 2020. “Many agencies had difficulty in securing the data required for the filing in 2020,” The Health Group notes in its electronic newsletter. Problems ranged from calculating hourly wage data to separating Nursing Administration and Administrative and General data to isolating vaccination costs (see more details of the new form and its problems in HCW by AAPC, Vol. XXIX, No. 38).

This year, “we encourage agencies to begin preparing the 2021 report early or get data to those responsible for preparation early to better address the difficulties encountered due to the new forms,” the Health Group urges. “Currently, no filing date extension, as experienced in the last two years, has been announced.”

Due date: Dec. 31, 2021 filings “should be expected to be submitted on or before May 31, 2022,” the Health Group emphasizes — in less than three months.