Home Health & Hospice Week

Watch for impact on final rule.

Home care and hospice providers caught in limbo by the government shutdown got some relief when Congress passed a last-minute agreement to end the impasse.

The Senate and House voted Oct. 16 to approve legislation ending the 16-day government shutdown. The agreement will fund the government until Jan. 15 and raise the debt limit through Feb. 7.

Medicare reimbursement continued to flow during the shutdown (see Eli’s HCW, Vol. XXII, No. 35). But providers waiting for some other Medicare-related services had to cool their heels.

For example: Lyn Kennedy, founder of OC Hospice in Tustin, Calif., wanted to clear up problems with obtaining the hospice’s Medicare number, reports the Orange County Register. But when she called the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services regional office for help, a message told her the CMS regional office staff are furloughed through the shut-down.

Kennedy and her investment partner have been paying the hospice’s staff since it began operating in April, but are still waiting on the ability to bill Medicare. "It’s getting more and more difficult," she told the newspaper. "There’s never an infinite amount of money. We’re not a big corporation. There’s just us."

OIG Kept Up Fraud-Fighting Pressure

The Department of Health and Human Services noted in its shutdown contingency plan that at least some of CMS’s fraud-fighting activities would be suspended. But that doesn’t mean providers were operating scrutiny-free.

The HHS Office of Inspector General continued working. "During the Federal government shutdown, OIG will continue to send notices of updates to our website with information about our Medicare and Medicaid oversight and enforcement activities, which will continue under our mandatory funding," the agency said in a notice at the outset of the shutdown.

Watch for: The jury is still out on whether the government shutdown will delay the publication of the home health prospective payment system rule expected in early November. "The rule must be published under the Congressional Review Act by Nov. 2 to be effective Jan. 1, 2014," notes William Dombi, VP for law with the National Association for Home Care & Hospice’s Center for Health Care Law. "It will be hard to [meet that deadline] and take into consideration all the points raised in the comments," Dombi tells Eli.