Home Health & Hospice Week

CMS to fix glitches in HHA outlier payments. Have you been under the 10 percent outlier cap, but haven't received your outlier payments? You should see some relief -- but it could take until fall or later. A new transmittal from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services "corrects errors in the calculation of the HH PPS 10 percent outlier limitation and instructs Medicare contractors to perform claim adjustments to ensure provider payments are accurate," it says. A few different payment system glitches have affected HHA outlier payments, CMS says in May 6 CR 7395. Underpayment: First, there was an error in how the system calculated the 10 percent limit due to incorrect assumptions about data in value codes 64, 65 and 17. Due to the mistake, "all HHAs' total payment amounts have been understated and therefore certain HHAs have had payments withheld as exceeding the outlier limitation in error," CMS [...]