LEGISLATIVE PRIORITIES FOR 2000
THE HOME HEALTH INDUSTRY
National Association for Home Care
American Association for Home Care
American Federation of Home Care Providers
Home Care Association of America
Visiting Nurse Associations of America
The five national home health associations, representing non-profit, for-profit, hospital-based and freestanding home health agencies, believe that the following two issues are of equal importance and join together to urge Congress and the Administration to restore and preserve the Medicare home health benefit by taking the following legislative actions this year:
Eliminate the pending 15% cut in home health expenditures currently scheduled for October 1, 2001.
Restore access to care for the sickest and most costly patients by:
- Authorizing $500 million in each of the next five years to be used as outlier payments under the prospective payment system for services to the most medically complex and costly patients;
- Increasing payments for home health services in rural areas by 10% to address the higher costs of delivering care in these areas; and
- Remove medical supplies from the per episode payments under the prospective payment system and create a budget neutral fee schedule for only the supplies that are actually used by patients.
It is also the consensus of the five national associations that Congress must direct the Health Care Financing Administration to:
Confine the OASIS data collection and reporting requirements to only Medicare and Medicaid patients;
Limit the OASIS assessment items to only the 20 questions that are actually needed to implement the new prospective payment system unless the costs associated with performing the full 80 question assessments during a 60 day episode of care are fully reimbursed; and
Provide for an emergency payment mechanism during at least the first six months of the new payment system to ensure that there is no interruption in patient services.