The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on Tuesday issued its highly anticipated final home health rule. Among other determinations, the rule expands the Home Health Value-Based Purchasing Model Expansion to 50 states and provides a Medicare increase of 3.2%, or $570 million, to home health agencies in calendar year 2022.
“CMS is committed to helping people get the care they need, where they need it,” CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure said in a statement. “This final rule will improve the delivery of home health services for people with Medicare. It will also improve our data collection efforts, helping us to identify health disparities and advance health equity.”
The rule offers many decisions affecting home health. For example, as part of the rule, CMS recalibrates Payment-Driven Groupings Model case-mix weights. Providers were outspoken about the recalibration in the proposed rule issued earlier this year.
“In this final rule, we are finalizing the recalibration of the PDGM case-mix weights, functional levels and comorbidity adjustment subgroups while maintaining the CY 2021 LUPA thresholds for CY 2022 to more accurately pay for the types of patients HHAs are serving,” CMS said in a fact sheet.
Home infusion therapy services also will receive an increase for CY 2022 under the rule. Home infusion therapy suppliers will receive an increase in payment of 5.1%, CMS said.
Two of the biggest pieces of news in the rule are the Medicare payment increase and the the growth of the HHVPB program. CMS previously proposed a 1.7%, or $310 million, payment rate update for home health agencies. The HHVBP program was in nine states. The first performance year for the expanded program will be 2023.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
