Congress completes BBA relief bill; vote expected tomorrow
Congress completes BBA relief bill; vote expected tomorrow
By MATTHEW HAY
HHBR Washington Correspondent
WASHINGTON Congress is expected to vote tomorrow on a package of Balanced Budget Act of 1997 reforms agreed to by House and Senate negotiators that would delay the 15% reduction in home health Medicare reimbursement scheduled for Oct. 1, 2000, until one year after the prospective payment system is implemented, a House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee spokesman confirmed this morning. The agreement also makes that cut contingent on examination of its necessity.
The agreement also includes nearly all of the regulatory relief measures the industry was seeking, including a $10-per-beneficiary payment to offset the costs associated with OASIS and a reduction in surety bond values to $50,000 or 10% of Medicare program revenues, whichever is less. The agreement would also eliminate consolidated billing for durable medical equipment and freeze the Health Care Financing Administration’s (Baltimore) inherent reasonableness authority until the General Accounting Office (Washington) completes its study of the agency’s methodology.
In addition, per-beneficiary limits below the median would be brought closer to the median. However, House and Senate negotiators were still trying to calculate that adjustment as of Friday. Hospice providers would receive a market basket update of -75% instead of -1%.
The final agreement does not rescind the 15-minute incremental billing requirement. Last-minute changes to the deal are possible, but not likely.
Home care providers expressed overall satisfaction with the agreement, but noted that major problems still confront high-cost, medically complex patients (see GWU story below).
"They could have done something tailored to insuring that long term, medically complex, high-cost patients were going to get services, but they tied their own hands on the issue of beneficiary access," said American Federation of Home Care Providers Executive Director Ann Howard.
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