Home Health & Hospice Week

Know Your Facts:

CMS Bases Reimbursement Decisions On These Stats

Home health agencies continue to get squeezed by lower payment rates, despite declining statistics cited by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in the 2017 Home Health Prospective Payment System proposed rule. “Preliminary analysis” of 2015 home health claims data indicates that while the number of FFS beneficiaries has remained relatively constant between 2013 and 2015:

  • the number of home health episodes decreased by 3.8 percent from 2013 to 2014, and decreased by 1.7 percent from 2014 to 2015;
  • the number of home health users that received at least one episode of care decreased by 2.95 percent between 2013 and 2014, and decreased by 0.5 percent from 2014 to 2015;
  • between 2013 and 2014 the number of HHAs billing Medicare for home health services decreased by 1.6 percent, and continued decreasing by 2.7 percent from 2014 to 2015;
  • the number of home health users, as a percentage of FFS beneficiaries, has been decreasing since 2011, from 9.2 percent to 8.7 percent in 2015.

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