Situation Report | November 9, 2020
On November 1, the state Department of Health (DOH) announced that the 2019 Licensed Home Care Services Agency (LHCSA) Statistical Report and the 2019 Assisted Living Program (ALP) LHCSA Statistical Report are available on the Healthcare Financial Data Gateway on the Health Commerce System (HCS).
All LHCSAs are required to submit these reports by December 31, 2020. The Statistical Report process also incorporates the state-required LHCSA registration process, further explained below, which is a condition that LHCSAs must meet in order to remain in operation.
In its notification here, DOH references six documents on the HCS that are available to assist providers, including a Dear Administrator Letter, FAQs and various instruction documents regarding software specifications, use of forms, and other technical or procedural information. The HCS also has a five-part video series that offers further training. See the notification for precise instructions on where to find these items in the HCS.
Penalties for Non-Submission
DOH indicates that failure to complete and submit the statistical report by the stipulated deadline will result in the following:
- A $500 fine for each month, or part of a month, that the organization is not registered.
- Agencies not being allowed to operate until they become registered.
- Agencies that fail to register timely for two years, not necessarily consecutive, may have their licenses revoked.
Additional Important Points
- The Report Manager Software has been revised. If you downloaded the software last year, you must uninstall the old software and install the new software. Instructions for this are located on the HCS.
- The 2019 LHCSA Statistical Report will be very similar to the 2018 LHCSA Statistical Report. A question has been added to the LSR1 Agency form so that LHCSAs providing companion care services can report this line of business. The 2019 ALP LHCSA Statistical Report will be the same as last year’s report.
- LHCSAs that are exclusively Fiscal Intermediaries must complete the LHCSA Statistical Report.
- LHCSAs that were newly licensed during the current year, 2020, will be automatically registered for and may provide services and bill during 2020. In addition, they must register for 2021 using the LHCSA Registration Short Form, a Health Electronic Response Data System (HERDS) survey on the HCS. All other LHCSAs must register for 2021 by successfully submitting a complete 2019 LHCSA Statistical Report and/or 2019 ALP LHCSA Statistical Report (which includes registration information).
- The 2019 LHCSA Statistical Report and the 2019 ALP LHCSA Statistical Report will use the DOH-developed Universal Data Collection System (UDCS) platform.
- Only those assigned the HCS Administrator Role will be allowed to submit the report. It is imperative that your agency’s HCS Administrator role assignments be accurate and up to date. The LHCSA Administrators from the 2018 Statistical Report are currently loaded on the Healthcare Financial Data Gateway. New Administrators will be added manually. If you are unable to access the report on the Healthcare Financial Data Gateway, send an e-mail to HCStatRpts@health.ny.gov to ensure that permissions to access the UDCS platform are in place.
- LHCSAs serving ALPs have a separate report on UDCS. ALP LHCSAs that exclusively serve ALP patients will not need to enter information on the 2019 LHCSA Statistical Report, but they will need to complete and submit the 2019 ALP LHCSA Statistical Report. ALP LHCSAs that also serve the community must submit the LHCSA Statistical Report regarding the patients in the community and the ALP LHCSA Statistical Report regarding their patients in the ALP.
If you have any questions, please send an e-mail to HCStatRpts@health.ny.gov (and copy HCA’s Andrew Koski at akoski@hcanys.org).