The Center for Medicare Advocacy (the Center) has submitted comments to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in response to CMS’s Calendar Year 2023 Home Health Care Proposed Rule.
The Center’s comments focused on:
- Continuing to raise concerns about the shrinking access to Medicare-covered home health care services, especially for people living with longer-term and chronic conditions, in large part due to unfair payment policies, discriminatory quality measures, and inappropriate auditing procedures;
- Supporting CMS telecommunications technology policies that protect beneficiary needs and access, while recommending greater accountability by home health agencies and stronger CMS oversight;
- Repeating the Center’s dissatisfaction with the expansion of a payment reward/penalty system, known as the Home Health Value-Based Purchasing (HHVBP), from 9 states to 50 states in 2023, that will further dissuade home health agencies from serving patients who have longer-term and chronic conditions;
- Recommending stronger progress toward CMS’s stated goal of achieving health equity.
We encourage you to submit comments about the proposed home health care rule to CMS at Regulations.gov. We invite you to adopt our work in your comment submissions. We request that you share our comments “far and wide”. CMS receives many comments from providers, but a small number of comments from beneficiaries and their advocates. Your words are important and your stories are powerful. If you have an experience to share, please do.
August 11, 2022 – K. Holt