Good News: CMS is Re-thinking the Home Health Pre-Claim Review Demonstration

On March 31, the home health community received some good news from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)!

CMS announced that it would stop the planned implementation of a Pre-Claim Review Demonstration (PCRD) in Florida, which would have applied new, mandatory regulatory requirements on all home health agencies operating across the state on April 1 and pause the PCRD program currently underway in Illinois for at least 30 days, which has made the delivery of timely home healthcare difficult since implemented in August 2016.

Here at the Partnership, we are incredibly grateful CMS responded to the concerns expressed by bipartisan lawmakers, home health providers, and advocates both in these states and across the country. We also want to applaud the thousands of advocates who collectively reached out to CMS and their lawmakers in recent months – your efforts truly made a difference!

We hope this decision will allow the home health community to work with CMS to strengthen the Medicare home health program by developing policy alternatives and through proper education and training. We welcome the opportunity to work with CMS to develop alternative, targeted reforms to reducing fraud and abuse without disrupting the care for our vulnerable Medicare patients.