[Updated] CMS Proposes 2.2% Decrease To Home Health Provider Medicare Payments in 2024Home Health Care news | By Andrew Donlan The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) published its FY 2024 home health proposed payment rule Friday. For next year, CMS is proposing to decrease aggregate home health payments by 2.2%, or an estimated $375 million less compared to 2023 levels. The draft is expected to be officially published in the Federal Register on July 10. The news is an expected but disappointing development for home health providers. “The $375 million decrease in estimated payments for CY 2024 reflects the effects of the CY 2024 proposed home health payment update percentage of 2.7% ($460 million increase), an estimated 5.1% decrease that reflects the effects of the permanent behavioral assumption adjustment (-$870 million) and an estimated 0.2% increase that reflects the effects of an updated FDL ($35 million increase),” CMS wrote in the draft. A -3.925% permanent rate adjustment was already implemented in 2023. Yet another round of payment cuts are likely to have devastating effects on the home health industry at large. “We continue to strenuously disagree with the budget neutrality methodology that CMS employed to arrive at the rate adjustments,” William A. Dombi, the president of the National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC), said in a statement shared with Home Health Care News. “Overall spending on Medicare home health is down, fewer patients are receiving care, patient referrals are being rejected because providers cannot afford to provide the care needed within the payment rates, and providers have closed their doors or restricted service territory to reduce care costs. If the rate was truly budget neutral, we would not see these actions occurring.” In order to curb future rate cuts – including in 2024 – Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) introduced the Preserving Access to Home Health Act of 2023 earlier this month. If passed, the bill would strip CMS of some of its payment-rate setting power. It would also force The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) to consider Medicare Advantage (MA) payment rates in its reports. “We now turn to Congress to correct what CMS has done and prevent the impending harm to the millions of highly vulnerable home health patients that depend and will depend in the future on this essential Medicare benefit,” Dombi said... Read Full Article to see what else is in the proposed rule. |