Home Health & Hospice Week

Medicare wants to standardize new HHAs' capitalization amounts. If you're waiting on your Medicare enrollment to process, you might be in for a surprise. That's because your regional home health intermediary might make a change to the capitalization amount required of you, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said in the Jan. 20 home health Open Door Forum. What's required: "Prior to enrolling in Medicare as an Home Health Agency (HHA), the provider must ... have available sufficient funds (known as 'initial reserve operating funds') to operate the HHA for the three-month period after its Medicare provider agreement becomes effective -- exclusive of actual or projected accounts receivable from Medicare or other health care insurers," RHHI Palmetto GBA explains on its Web site. RHHIs have been applying the IROF capitalization requirements differently, a CMS official noted in the forum. Now, "the Medicare contractors are trying to make sure that [...]