As if home care agencies needed any more encouragement to dive into the Medicare Advantage (MA) world, they got some last week — courtesy of a well-known Capitol Hill veteran. Home care providers have been positioning their businesses to appeal to potential MA players since April 2018, when Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) […]
Lines of separation throughout the continuum of care continue to disappear as the post-acute care industry seeks to smooth patient transitions. Those disappearances often happen internally and on a single-system basis as well. The Avamere Family of Companies — a large provider of senior housing, home health, hospice and other care services across the acuity […]
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on Friday unveiled a proposal to expand telehealth benefits in Medicare Advantage, making it easier for beneficiaries to access these services from home rather than a health care facility. Under the proposed rule, which would take effect in calendar year 2020, MA plans could cover telehealth services […]
The Bundled Payments for Care Improvement (BPCI) program has — counter to its goals and initial popularity among home health care provider circles — resulted in the Medicare program losing hundreds of millions of dollars. That’s at least according to a new report on the initiative released Tuesday. Under BPCI, providers agree to split a […]
Despite high hopes when it was introduced in 2012, the Bundled Payment for Care Improvement (BPCI) program has become somewhat of an afterthought for the home health industry. Diminished excitement surrounding bundled payments is partially because post-acute providers, including home health and skilled nursing agencies, can no longer be episode initiators under the upcoming BPCI Advanced model. […]
Medicare spending on older Americans during their end-of-life years was down toward the start of last decade, a new study has found. Led by Dartmouth researchers, the study upends the notion that older adults, many of whom end up on hospice care in the last few weeks of life, are largely responsible for driving up […]
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is in the midst of a multi-year process to develop new data collection requirements—and the agency still needs home health care agencies in multiple areas around the country to weigh in. CMS and the RAND Corporation last month kicked off the second phase of a program to […]
Accountable care organizations (ACOs) are designed to save money by fostering cooperation: By working together, providers across the health care continuum can hopefully save Medicare money and boost quality. But the largest share of the savings may simply come from shifting patients out of skilled nursing and home health settings, a new study suggests—and not […]
President Trump’s nominee to replace Tom Price as head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) expressed an interest to overhauling the way Medicare and Medicaid cover end-of-life care. He also praised the role home care can play in efforts to lower health spending through Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). While testifying before the Senate […]
Buoyed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) recent decision to delay the home health groupings model (HHGM), executives at Kindred Healthcare, Inc. (NYSE: KND) say they see growth ahead in the sector. After taking a financial hit amid the recent natural disasters, Kindred expects annual revenue and admissions growth of 3% to […]
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