Home Health & Hospice Week

Take to Twitter to vent your spleen.

Home health agencies are stepping up their efforts to head off the devastating Home Health Groupings Model before it becomes final.

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the influential Republican chair of the Senate Finance Committee, wrote a Sept. 22 letter to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma. Hatch urged CMS to slow the pace of payment reform. “While I support the agency’s long-term objective of more precisely aligning Medicare payments with patient care needs…I am concerned that CMS may be rushing to finalize complex policy changes too quickly,” wrote Senator Hatch, according to the National Association for Home Care & Hospice. “It is … important, however, that these proposed changes are methodologically sound and implemented in a reasonable timeframe.”

Hatch’s letter comes after one sent to Verma by a group of 49 bipartisan senators led by Florida senators Bill Nelson (D) and Marco Rubio (R), urging CMS to withdraw the HHGM proposal, at least for the time being, notes the Partnership for Quality Home Healthcare (see Eli’s HCW, Vol. XXVI, No. 34).

NAHC, the Partnership, and other industry groups have been urging agencies to reach out to their elected representatives about the issue. That includes “Tweet Tuesdays” aimed at President Trump, NAHC notes.

Wait and see: How much influence will this pressure have? HHAs will find out when CMS releases the 2018 HH PPS final rule, which is expected by early November. However, with the volume of comments and the later-than-usual proposed rule release, that release date may slide.