Home Health & Hospice Week

Rural areas see access problems, reps say.Home health agencies should see an increase in their Medicare payment rates next year instead of them staying relatively flat, insist commenters on the 2013 home health prospective payment system proposed rule.In the rule published in the July 13 Federal Register, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services proposes a microscopic 0.0016 percent in-crease to the PPS episodic base rate (see Eli's HCW, Vol. XXI, No. 25). The increase to $2,141.95 next year includes a 2.5 percent inflation update minus a 1 percent reduction required by the Affordable Care Act, and a 1.32 percent reduction for so-called case mix creep, the rule explains.Added together with all the proposed rule's provisions, Medicare payments to HHAs would actually decrease by 0.1 percent or $20 million next year, CMS says in a press release.CMS's comment period on the rule closed Sept. 5, and many of the 130+ [...]