This minute covers some of the changes for the Home Health Proposed Rule that were released on June 21st.
Hello Everyone and Welcome to our Monday Minute. Today I want to go through some more of the details of the 2022 Home Health Proposed Rule. As you can see, the list on the screen is very lengthy. The rule itself that was released at the end of June, with a two month comment period was 387 pages long and contained tons of changes. We are going to do a really deep dive in the Proposed Rule webinar that we will have on July 15th, but these are some of the highlights. As you can see, the behavioral adjustment is going to remain. LUPA thresholds are going to remain in the range of two to six visits – avoid receiving a per visit payment by getting to those LUPA thresholds. Case Mix Weights, for the most part, are all recalibrated. Wage Indexes have been adjusted, of course, as they always are. For the major changes that happened to the CBSA areas last year, changing some areas from urban to rural, were in a temporary state in 2021, but in 2022 that will be final and they will be in their permanent CBSA allocations. The LUPA add on has not included occupational therapy in the past, but will now include occupational therapy as they are moving to finalize that occupational therapists can do start of care comprehensive assessments when therapy is ordered.
The outlier fixed dollar loss ratio has been dropped significantly from .56 to .41, in the webinar on the 15th, we will go through the details of how that calculation will pan out. They are updating language in the regulation to now include allowed practitioners versus physicians. Now that it has been made permanent, that non-physician practitioners may certify and sign orders for home health patients. The Value Based Purchasing model, evidently, is going to be expanded to a nationwide program starting January 1, 2022. That will be a webinar of its own that we will be adding to our schedule. Multiple Quality Reporting Program changes, the conditions of participation update includes some of the changes that were made in the form of COVID-19 waivers that will now be made permanent, the details of that in the July 15th webinar. Infusion therapy updated rates were included and there have been some adjustments to provider enrollment.
As you can see, huge, huge number of changes, any education that you can be involved in with your State Associations, the National Association or with HPS would do you well, in preparing for the onslaught of these changes in 2022. Some of these changes may appear on the surface, to be positive in the fact that the behavioral adjustment is remaining the same and our rates are technically being increased, but you also have to take into account wage index changes, all the Case Mix Weights being recalibrated, the functional calculation of the PDGM model, significant changes in the point allocations etc. So you’ll want to make sure that you are looking at the actual impact in the end, not just taking pieces and parts of this and saying we’re going to be fine. Thank you all again for participating today and we will hopefully be with you on the webinar on the 15th and see you in person this summer and fall in your State Association Conferences. Have a fabulous day.
CMS Proposes Calendar Year 2022 Home Health Prospective Payment System Rate Update
HPS Alliance Webinar: Home Health Proposed Rule
Thursday, July 15, 2021 | 11:00am – 12:30 pm CDT
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