“Nobody knows what the future holds” has been one of the biggest lessons learned during the COVID-19 emergency. But even as the home health industry plays its part in responding to new infection spikes across parts of the country, it has never been more important to stay ahead of the curve. To remain competitive in […]
In somewhat of a surprise move, U.S. health care policymakers unveiled plans last week to expand the Home Health Value-Based Purchasing (HHVBP) Model, a nine-state Medicare demonstration designed to better align reimbursement to quality of care. Despite backing from most of the home health industry, the HHVBP Model — first implemented in 2016 — had […]
The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has approved a handful of new hospitals under its rapidly growing hospital-at-home initiative, Administrator Seema Verma announced on Monday. Originally unveiled at the end of November, CMS’s “Acute Hospital Care at Home” initiative is designed to give hospitals “unprecedented” and “comprehensive” regulatory flexibilities to treat certain […]
The Patient-Driven Groupings Model (PDGM) was supposed to define home health care in 2020. Instead, this year was almost entirely shaped by COVID-19, a point that’s reinforced by the most widely read stories on Home Health Care News. Of the top-10 stories on HHCN in 2020, eight were related to coronavirus coverage. From the first […]
National home health spending soared to a whopping $113.5 billion in 2019, according to a new analysis from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Office of the Actuary published Wednesday in the journal Health Affairs. While that figure marked another all-time high for home health care, the U.S. government still spent far more […]
In April 2019, federal health care officials unveiled a new direct-contracting payment model to accelerate the shift toward value-based care for U.S. primary care providers. The goal of that model — which has 51 entities already signed up — was to bring a private-sector approach to risk-sharing arrangements in traditional Medicare. The U.S. Centers for […]
In its initial announcement, the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) went out of its way to clearly state its new hospital-at-home waiver program was not designed for home health agencies. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t any upside for them, industry insiders say. Unveiled on Nov. 25, CMS’s new hospital-at-home waiver program […]
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) last week took extraordinary steps toward increasing the U.S. health care system’s capacity by shifting more acute care into the home. In a Wednesday announcement, CMS unveiled new, comprehensive flexibilities that allow hospitals to provide their services “in locations beyond their existing walls.” To secure those flexibilities, […]
The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is moving forward with its plan to retire the old Home Health Compare in favor of a new, multi-setting tool known simply as “Care Compare.” By Dec. 1, CMS will move away from Home Health Compare, Nursing Home Compare, Hospital Compare and the five similar online […]
Home health providers continue to make serious progress in reducing improper payments under fee-for-service Medicare, the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced Monday. Since 2016, improper payments to home health providers have dropped by an estimated $5.9 billion, according to CMS. All improper payments in fee-for-service Medicare are down by an estimated […]