Now Available: Telehealth Indicator for Doctors and Clinicians on Care Compare

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) added a new telehealth indicator on clinician profile pages on Medicare Care Compare and in the Provider Data Catalog (PDC). The new indicator helps beneficiaries and caregivers more easily find clinicians who provide telehealth services.

Telemedicine services expanded in response to the COVID-19 public health emergency to improve patients’ access to care. Last year, CMS reported a 30-fold increase in telehealth services, with more than half of Medicare beneficiaries utilizing them between March 1, 2020 and February 28, 2021. The telehealth indicator is the latest example of CMS’s efforts to ensure Care Compare provides beneficiaries and caregivers meaningful information about services they value as they search for clinicians.

For more information, access the Telehealth Indicator on Medicare Care Compare fact sheet.

If you have any questions about the telehealth indicator or public reporting for doctors and clinicians on Care Compare, contact the QPP Service Center at 1-866-288-8292 (Monday-Friday 8 a.m. - 8 p.m. ET) or by e-mail at [email protected]. To receive assistance more quickly, consider calling during non-peak hours (before 10 a.m. and after 2 p.m. ET). Customers who are hard of hearing can dial 711 to be connected to a TRS Communications Assistant.  

What Home-Based Care Leaders Should Know About The $1.66 Trillion Spending Bill

Home Heath Care News | By Patrick Filbin

The proposed $1.66 trillion omnibus government funding bill – which is expected to pass through the U.S. House and Senate this week – includes multiple home-based care provisions of importance.
 
Among those is new home health payment transparency language, an extension of the rural add-on, a separate extension of the Money Follows the Person program and more.
 
While home health and home care stakeholders will be pleased with some of what’s included in the omnibus spending bill, they will likely be at least partially disappointed that Congress did not postpone the 3.925% rate cut that was part of the home health final rule for 2023.
Providers had been pushing for that delay once the final rule was published. However, the payment rule will move forward as published.
 
One of the biggest wins for the home care industry is the absence of the 4% Medicare cuts across the board for 2023 and 2024, also known as the PAYGO reductions.
 
In March 2021, Congress passed the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA), a $1.9 trillion economic recovery package that included — among other things — a 10% increase to Federal Medicaid Assistance Percentage (FMAP) for home- and community-based services.
 
It also included $8.5 billion in Provider Relief Fund money for rural health care providers, including home health and hospice agencies.
 
That relief funding has to be paid via the Senate by law – Pay-As-You-Go, or PAYGO. Legislation can’t result in an increase to the federal budget deficit without an offset from increased revenue in one place or reduced spending in another.
 
In other words, the federal budget must be neutral.
 
Because of that, many in the home-based care world feared that providers would be called on to help offset ARPA’s spending. But that will not be the case.

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The Top 10 Home Health Care News Stories Of 2022

Home Health Care News | By Andrew Donlan
 
Despite the hope that COVID-19’s effect on the world would wane in 2022, the year started with the highest case counts that home health and home care providers had seen, both among patients and staff. 
 
But as Home Health Care News’ top stories of the year suggest, COVID-19 did not define what went on in home-based care in 2022. Instead, a trend that had been bubbling under the surface for years – perhaps even prior to the pandemic – came to fruition. Some of the largest companies in the country invested in home health care. 
 
Yet, all the while, the home-based care world faced existential threats: payment rate cuts in home health care, plus cost of care rising in home care. 
 
Reflect back on this year in home-based care by revisiting 10 of HHCN’s most widely read stories.

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Final Spending Bill Falls Short in Offsetting Fee Schedule Cuts

APTA

The omnibus package likely to pass provides insufficient relief, but it does include several wins for the profession in other areas.

In a disappointing response to advocacy that brought the concerns of millions of health care providers to Capitol Hill, the U.S. Congress is poised to approve an end-of-year spending package that fails to fully restore cuts included in the 2023 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule. Rather than provide the needed full 4.5% in funding that would offset reductions in the conversion factor, lawmakers opted for a smaller 2.5% increase this year and an even smaller 1.25% increase in 2024. The resulting cuts will affect 27 specialties, including physical therapy.

The spending decision was included in sweeping omnibus legislation that incorporates elements of multiple bills whose fates hadn't been resolved. While the resulting last-minute legislative mixed bag is short on fee schedule fixes, the bill does include APTA-supported gains in other areas including telehealth, workforce diversity, lymphedema treatment, and the role of PTs and PTAs in the Department of Veterans Affairs. 

'Failure to Fully Commit to Protecting Patient Access'

For the health care provider community, the most significant feature of the omnibus package — the provision of a 2.5% conversion factor funding increase rather than the needed 4.5% infusion — was the final chapter in a yearlong fight to convince Congress to once again intervene to buffer the harm included in the upcoming Medicare Physician Fee Schedule.

As it has for the past two years, in 2022 the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services finalized a fee schedule for 2023 that offsets increases to payment for codes related to evaluation and management with significant cuts to the conversion factor, a key element used in determining payment associated with codes used by a wide range of providers.

APTA and 100 other provider and patient organizations joined in an effort to press Congress to provide a 4.5% spending increase to fully offset the fee schedule cuts. In the end, rather than stepping in at the 11th hour to provide full or nearly full offsets as it did for the past two years, Congress opted to scale back the relief. 

While the 2.5% funding increase will lessen the severity of the cuts, providers will still be left to deal with reductions just as the country's health care system continues to recover from the coronavirus pandemic. The response from provider groups was immediate, with organizations such as the American Medical Association and the Surgical Care Coalition expressing their frustration at Congress’ failure to provide the full 4.5% funding.

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