Industry Notes:
GRANT AIMS TO REBALANCE NURSING HOME, HOME CARE FUNDING UNDER MEDICAID
Published on Mon Jan 15, 2007
Hundreds of beneficiaries to move home under initiative.
Connecticut will receive a $24.2 million federal grant that will help residents move from nursing homes into their own homes, Gov. Jodi Rell (R) says in a press release.
Under the Money Follows the Person grant, "we can help get more people home by arranging support like 24-hour, in-home care, which Medicaid has not traditionally paid for," Rell notes.
The state aims to use the grant funding to move an additional 700 people from nursing homes into their own homes and communities over the next five years. Under the grant, Connecticut will cover in-home care, personal management, home alterations to accommodate wheelchairs and other medical equipment needs and other support services.
"This approach will be cost-effective for taxpayers and lead to wonderful improvements in the quality of life for many of our seniors and people with disabilities," Rell extols.
Not enough: However, the state's traditional home care budget is lacking, says the Connecticut Association for Home Care. Rell proposes no increase for Medicaid funding for next year, the trade group says. Home care providers also got no adjustment last year.
CAHC is lobbying for a significant rate adjustment, automatic indexing of Medicaid home care rates in future years, an increase in the subsequent visit payment rate, and direct payment for preventative measures such as flu shots and telemonitors, it says in its newsletter to members. • Home care providers might see their reimbursement from Medicaid threatened under President Bush's 2008 proposed budget. The budget calls for Medicare to reduce home care funding by $9.7 billion over five years and hospice funding by $1.1 billion (see Eli's HCW, Vol. XVI, No. 6).
The budget also wants to ratchet down Medicaid spending by $25 billion in that time period. The proposed cuts don't affect home care and hospice directly, allows the National Association for Home Care & Hospice. But "reductions in the federal contribution to Medicaid will weaken the states' ability to provide these much-needed [home health and hospice] services," NAHC warns.
As with the Medicare reduction proposals, many members of Congress are speaking out against the Medicaid reductions. • You should soon be able to get your patient outcomes data sorted by branch. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is updating its OASIS data systems, which will allow home health agencies to obtain outcome-based quality improvement (OBQI) and measurement (OBQM) reports by branch. CMS originally projected the change would take place by December, according to the QIES Technical Support Web site. But now NAHC reports that CMS will begin offering reports by branch this month.
When you request branch information, reports will display for the agency as a whole, for patients served by the parent agency, and for patients served [...]
