Home Health & Hospice Week

Since Medicare began paying long-term care hospitals less for patients requiring severe wound care, those patients have more often gone to less costly settings including home health — and that has saved the program money, says a recent report from the Government Accountability Office.

Medicare spent about 2.4 percent less on total “principal severe wound care stays — that is, stays where a severe wound ICD-10 code was the principal diagnosis,” after changing LTCH payment, the GAO says. Such spending dropped from about $2.06 billion in fiscal year 2016 to about $2.01 billion in fiscal year 2018.

The report is at www.gao.gov/assets/720/711617.pdf.