National Home Health Spending Dips to $129.1 Billion as Health Care Sector Normalizes

U.S. health care expenditures ballooned in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but they’re starting to normalize. National home health spending, in turn, experienced a comparatively small decline over the past year. That’s according to the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which published its annual spending analysis […]

Making Sense of a Unified Post-Acute Value-Incentive Program

Home health agencies have had to navigate several changes since 2020, from the payment mechanics of the Patient-Driven Groupings Model (PDGM) to the new policies of the public health emergency (PHE). Yet there’s another change on the distant horizon that forward-thinking operators can’t afford to forget about: a unified payment system for post-acute care providers, […]

Medicare Sequestration’s Return Puts Home Health Agencies in Financial Jeopardy

Home health agencies and other Medicare-reimbursed health care providers are just a couple weeks away from the return of sequestration. For many agencies, the restart of the 2% cut will merely be a return to normal, pre-pandemic business. For others, however, it presents another cash-flow disruption that could, at worst, put some smaller operators out […]

CMS Solidifies Vaccination Deadlines, Releases Guidance for Home Health Agencies

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday threw its support behind the nationwide COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers, while simultaneously axing a vaccine-or-test rule for large employers. Last week’s developments shouldn’t shock the in-home care operators that have been following the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and Occupational Safety and Health […]

[Updated] Supreme Court Blocks OSHA Mandate, Allows CMS Rule to Take Effect

The long-awaited decisions regarding the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates have finally arrived from the U.S. Supreme Court. In the end, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) “soft” mandate was shot down by SCOTUS by a 6-3 count. The mandate would have applied to all private businesses with 100 employees or more, requiring workers to […]

CMS Releases Vaccine Mandate Guidance for Home Health Providers

The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released guidance on evaluating providers’ compliance with the federal COVID-19 vaccination mandate for health care workers. Although CMS originally published the interim final rule in November, it posted the guidance for state survey agency directors on Tuesday. Broadly, the guidance applies to providers working under the […]

Home Health Providers Failing to Deliver Required Services, New Survey Suggests

Medicare-certified home health providers are falling short when it comes to the amount of care services they’re offering, a new survey released Thursday from the Center For Medicare Advocacy (CMA) suggests. “Our surveys confirmed what we, unfortunately, hear all the time at [CMA], either directly from the beneficiaries, family members or friends who’ve tried to […]