POTUS Signs Innovation Act, Expands Home Health Opportunties

Long-awaited legislation that could allow more individuals to receive care services in their homes has been signed into law. President Obama recently signed the Innovation Act, opening up the Programs of All-Inclsuive Care for the Elderly (PACE) for people in need of nursing home level of care to receive these services at home. The bill […]

CMS Downsizes Bundled Payment Program for Joint Replacements

Home health agencies already partnered with hospitals may soon benefit after the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) finalized a rule to incentivize hospitals to work with other post-acute providers for knee and hip replacement procedures. Bundled payments will go into effect for 67 hospital locations for patients who undergo knee and hip replacement […]

Home Health to Get Schooled on Billing Requirements

Home health agencies now have a clearer idea of what to expect from the so-called “probe and educate” process related to Medicare billing, thanks to a recently released document from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). A final rule issued in November 2014 removed the requirement of a face-to-face encounter narrative as part of […]

HealthSouth Completes $170 Million Acquisition After Rocky Quarter

HealthSouth Corporation (NYSE: HLS) has completed its $170 million acquisition of CareSouth Health System Inc., expanding its home health and hospice footprint and furthering its strategy of building integrated post-acute services that span inpatient and at-home settings. The CareSouth acquisition was finalized less than a week after HealthSouth announced its third quarter 2015 financial results. […]

Home Health Payments to Take $260 Million Hit

Medicare is still planning to make big reductions to home health agency payments, though they may not be as drastic as it originally seemed. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced Thursday changes to the Medicare home health prospective payment system for calendar year 2016. Specifically, CMS now projects that Medicare payments to home […]

New Discharge Rules Come with Steep Pricetag for Home Health

Home health care agencies might soon be hit hard by new discharge planning requirements, implementation of which is estimated to ring in at an annual cost of $283 million. Agencies should be required to communicate more information to other providers and more actively engage patients and caregivers in the discharge process, according to the massive proposed rule […]

Editor’s Picks: Top 10 Largest Home Health Providers

Here in Chicago this week, the Cubbies had us down in the dumps when they missed out on their chance to make it to the World Series, but we stayed strong to keep you up to date on the top-10 largest home health providers. Our readers also explored the latest departures in the Centers for […]

Congress Passes Bill to Increase Home Health Options

Legislation that enables more older adults to remain at home instead of moving into a nursing home has passed in Congress. The law expands the Medicare Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) to allow providers to develop pilot programs to serve more people who are at risk of needing a nursing home and […]

Pioneer ACO Bites the Dust, Cites Post-Acute Constraints

After three years of mixed results, the pilot program for accountable care organizations (ACOs) by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has lost nearly half its original participants. In a move that reflects the continued turbulence in getting ACO programs off the ground, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, a New Hampshire-based nonprofit academic health system, announced it […]

How One Home Health Agency is Leading on Palliative Care

Demand for palliative care is on the rise, presenting a huge opportunity for home health agencies that have figured out how to provide these services, given regulatory and other constraints. This year, the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) named four palliative care providers as new leadership centers to meet this growing demand and help […]