CMS has provided an important opportunity for beneficiaries, and their advocates, to convey experiences and concerns about the devastating lack of access to Medicare-covered home health aides, especially for individuals living with chronic and longer-term impairments. In the recent 2024 Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) for Home Health Care, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a Request for Information (RFI) seeking responses to 8 questions about access to Medicare-covered home health aides. 2023-14044.pdf (govinfo.gov) (see pages 43671-43672). The Center for Medicare Advocacy expects that home health agencies will respond that there is not enough available payment or labor. Beneficiaries and advocates must discuss the critical need for availability of aide services and the consequences when qualifying coverage is not available. The Center for Medicare Advocacy has spent years expressing concerns over the shrinking home health aide benefit and we have written our full response to these 8 questions. We have also written a shorter executive summary of our response. We urge you to respond to the Home Health Aide RFI with your own stories, concerns, and experiences. Please use our responses to inform your comments and please share your submissions with us.
Responses to the RFI should be filed on or before August 29th at regulations.gov. Please make sure your voices are heard so that beneficiaries can access the aide services they need to keep them safe at home.
August 10, 2023 – K. Holt