Hello, everyone and welcome to our Monday Minute. Today we are here to talk about the touchy subject of sequestration.
The sequestration deduction from your Medicare payments began several years ago and continued to be deducted and renewed until the Public Health Emergency began in March, 2020. They then went through the process of having a suspension put on the sequestration adjustment so that agencies would not have that additional reduction during the Public Health Emergency. They set that pause on sequestration through March 31, 2022, and it now is re-activated.
Any claims that have a date of service April 1, 2022 or later, will see 1% for the sequestration reduction. Then when we get to July, 2022, any data service July, 2022, and later, you will see that sequestration deduction increased to 2%, which is the amount that it was prior to the beginning of the Public Health Emergency. So we will start with a 1% reduction with claims having dates of service April 1, 2022 or later. When we get to July 1, 2022, any claims with those dates of service or later will be a 2% reduction. Also note that on the remittance advice, you will see a CO 253 code that will be reflective of the 2% reduction, so you will more readily be able to identify that it is sequestration that has been deducted from your payments.
We also want to make sure that you are very clear that currently the Public Health Emergency has been extended through mid-July. The concern is that many of you, who should have been actively participating in the 1135 waivers that were put in place, as a result of the Public Health Emergency, that you are preparing and realize that when that Public Health Emergency officially ends, you will be in a situation where the waivers will no longer apply. So hopefully you are continuing to prepare for that end.
We want to thank you all for participating today. If you have any additional questions, please don’t hesitate to let us know. We are very excited about seeing agencies again in live settings as we continue to participate in live conferences across the nation.
As an Advisory board member of the Home Health and Hospice Financial Managers Association under the National Association for Home Care and Hospice. I want to personally invite you to the Home Health and Hospice Financial Managers Conference in Las Vegas in July. We’re very excited about the content and one of the hot topics of course, is discussions that will be had and training for the implementation of the Value Based Purchasing model in 2023. Registration is fully open and we hope to see you there. Have a great day!