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Home Health & Hospice Week

Regulations:

Proposed CHOW Exceptions Don't Go Far Enough

Published on Wed Sep 15, 2010

The 36-month rule's limits on your selling options may surprise you. Lots of innocent providers are being constrained by the feds' new rule on change of ownership, and newly proposed modifications to the rule won't help much. Background: Last year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services implemented a rule under which home health agencies undergoing a change of ownership (CHOW) within 36 months of initial enrollment or a sale have to undergo another initial certification survey. The so-called 36-month rule aims to stop "certificate mill" operations, CMS explains the 2011 prospective payment system proposed rule published in the July 23 Federal Register. "Under this scenario ... entrepreneurs apply for Medicare certification, undergo a survey, and become enrolled in Medicare, but then immediately sell the agency without having seen a single Medicare beneficiary or hired a single employee," CMS explains in the rule. "These brokers ... enroll in Medicare exclusively [...]
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