Home Health & Hospice Week

Providers also raise questions in Open Door Forum on CMS Web site, OASIS.

You can expect your Medicare payment rates to change rapidly if Congress approves the budget reconciliation package as expected Feb. 1.

Both the House and Senate in December approved the budget legislation, which included a freeze to home health agencies' Medicare payment rates and a one-year 5 percent add-on for agencies serving rural patients.

But because of small changes the Senate made in the bill, the House has to approve the Deficit Reduc-tion Act again before it goes to the President to sign into law (see Eli's HCW, Vol. XIV, No. 45).

In response to concerns raised in the Jan. 18 home health Open Door Forum by the Texas Association for Home Care's Heather Vasek, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services says it has looked into options for implementing the pending legislation.

The fact that the potentially outgoing 2.8 percent pay increase and the incoming 5 percent rural add-on have different effective dates is making the issue that much more complicated, a CMS staffer admitted. The pay increase applies to episodes that end Jan. 1 or later, while the rural add-on applies to episodes that begin Jan. 1 or after. That's "a curiosity and a complication," the official noted.

"We think we have ways to handle it," the staffer assured the 370 forum listeners. But CMS isn't offering further details until the legislation is signed.

Other issues raised in the forum include:

• CMS' Web site. HHAs despaired at losing all their bookmarks when CMS redesigned its Web site last month. CMS staff are working on getting information and links back up on the new Web site, a CMS official promised the Forum. "We're trying to get it up for you as soon as we can."

The agency has succeeded in restoring the link to the master code list for home health consolidated billing, at least. The much-missed list is again available at www.cms.hhs.gov/HomeHealthPPS/03_coding&billing.asp under the "Downloads" section.

• OASIS regulations. The new OASIS final rule that will eliminate the seven-day lock date and require a 30-day transmission deadline doesn't take effect until June 21, a CMS staffer reminded listeners (see Eli's HCW, Vol. XIV, No. 1).

CMS did consider furnishing a high-speed Internet access method to transmit OASIS data, but funding for a demonstration for the change didn't come through this year. CMS may consider the change next year, an official said in response to a caller requesting faster transmission than the current dial-up system allows.

• QI training. HHAs can avail themselves of new Quality Improvement training modules developed by OASIS contractor University of Colorado and Quality Improvement Organization Delmarva Foundation. The tools, which aim to help with analyzing outcome reports and translating performance of individual agencies into improvement plans, are at www. medqic.org/ObqiTraining/home.html and require simple registration, CMS said.