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Write Congress NOW: S.433/H.R. 2573 Imperative as Home Care Faces 8% Cuts

“Your action to protect New York’s Medicare home health system (S.433/H.R. 2573) just reached a dramatically new level of urgency,” says an advocacy campaign message posted today on HCA’s Legislative Action Center.

Please send this message to Congress now, and share this action item widely with your staff and colleagues so that they act as well. It takes less than a minute of your time.

Over 500 of you acted on our previous campaign. Can we count on double the numbers this time?

Click here to act on the campaign Urgent: S.433/H.R. 2573 Imperative as Home Care Faces 8% Cuts.

As we’ve reported to you over the past week, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has just proposed even deeper so-called “behavior assumption” cuts at a stunning 8.01 percent reduction for Medicare home health services as part of its proposed payment rule for 2020. (CMS’s previous recommendation called for cuts of 6.42 percent.)

These cuts assume that home health agencies will “upcode” or change their clinical practices in the future to recover losses or gain higher payments under the Patient Driven Groupings Model (PDGM) in 2020.

S.433/H.R. 2573, a bipartisan bill, limits these reductions to no more than two percent annually. It also requires that adjustments be made only after there is retrospective evidence warranting a rate change, not just suspicions of future activity.

HCA is continuing our analysis of the nearly 400-page proposed payment rule with further information upcoming in a detailed policy memo for HCA members. In the meantime, please act today.

With literally thousands of advocates in reach of HCA member organizations, we need to go big in getting this legislation advanced.