In a new report released Monday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG) highlighted dozens of its unimplemented recommendations for reducing fraud, waste and abuse throughout the Medicare and Medicaid systems. Many of the recommendations were tied to home health, hospice and personal care services, in addition to how […]
Category: Regulation
After federal health care policymakers fine-tuned the Patient-Driven Groupings Model (PDGM) last October with a 6.42% cut based on certain behavioral assumptions, some industry experts predicted there would be a modest uptick in home health bankruptcies in 2020. “The last time the industry went through this kind of major change was in the late 1990s […]
As part of its Patients Over Paperwork initiative and as a way to make home health requirements more consistent with other settings of care, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is proposing to allow therapist assistants to furnish maintenance therapy. Under current home health rules, only physical therapists (PTs), occupational therapists (OTs) and […]
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is finding new ways to penalize home health providers. In its proposed payment rule for 2020 released last week, CMS floated the idea of phasing out pre-payments for home health services starting in 2020, killing them completely by the following year. Currently, home health providers can receive […]
Home health operators and industry advocates are voicing their concerns following a proposal from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to eliminate home health pre-payments and move forward with behavioral assumptions under the Patient-Driven Groupings Model (PDGM). Specifically, many worry the proposed changes will create cash flow problems for home health agencies, which […]
The Home Care Association of America (HCAOA) and the California Association for Health Services at Home (CAHSAH) are suing the state of California over a policy that gives labor unions access to caregivers’ personal information for the purpose of organizing. In their suit, the plaintiffs, represented by Littler Mendelson, claim that the state policy is […]
A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers is looking to relax federal anti-kickback rules related to how, when and where physicians refer their patients. Doing so could mean smoother referral relationships for home health providers, especially the biggest ones and those operating within an accountable care organization (ACO). Efforts to loosen anti-kickback regulations come from the […]
Data breaches are on the rise across the health care industry at large, with the number of cyber attacks targeting health data reaching record highs in 2018. And due to the mobile nature of home health care, the sector is especially vulnerable to attacks. In 2018, there were 365 health care data breaches of 500 […]
Among its many changes, the Patient-Driven Groupings Model (PDGM) aims to completely refocus how home health providers are paid for the therapy services they deliver, mainly by moving away from visit volume as the determining factor in calculating reimbursement. When the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) first proposed PDGM in July 2018, some […]
Medicaid beneficiaries in one state can now use Lyft (Nasdaq: LYFT) as a covered transportation option to get to and from medical appointments. The San Francisco-based ride-hailing company announced Wednesday that it has become a certified Medicaid provider in Arizona, where it aims to help address social determinants of health by reducing missed doctor’s visits […]