Despite the home health industry concerns, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has finalized the Patient-Driven Groupings Model (PDGM) planned to start in 2020. CMS also finalized several other changes to how home health providers are reimbursed for their services starting in 2019, including changes to remote patient monitoring rules and refining the Value-Based Purchasing Model (VBPM).
CMS projects that Medicare payments to home health agencies in calendar year 2019 will be increased by 2.2 percent or $420 million. The reimbursement rate increase is the first the home health industry has received in a decade and slightly more than what CMS initially suggested in July’s proposed payment rule. Read more here.
