Home Health & Hospice Week

Payment:

Some Rural HHAs Take Extra Hit In PPS Final Rule

Check out your new CBSA designation.

The Home Health Prospective Payment System final rule provision for the new 2015 wage index may hit some agencies squarely in the wallet.

“We are updating the home health wage index using a 50/50 blend of the existing core-based statistical area (CBSA) designations and the new CBSA designations set out in a February 28, 2013, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) bulletin,” the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services notes in the rule.

Loss: “Only counties that are classified as rural under the new area delineations would receive the rural add-on,” CMS says in the rule. “We believe that this method of adopting the most current OMB delineations would increase the integrity of the wage index as it … more accurately represents geographic variation in wage levels.”

This “unfortunate” policy will result in more than 100 counties losing the rural add-on in 2015, the National Association for Home Care & Hos-pice points out in its rule analysis. 

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