CMS proposes negative home health payment update for CY 2023

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Friday issued its calendar year 2023 proposed rule for the home health prospective payment system, which would reduce net HH payments by $810 million in calendar year 2023 relative to CY 2022. The rule also would strive to achieve budget-neutrality for the Patient-driven Groupings Model on a prospective basis through a 6.9 percentage point cut to all payments; and implement a 0.2% high-cost outlier cut. AHA said it was very concerned about the unprecedented scale of the proposed PDGM behavioral offset. In addition, the rule would require collection of all patient assessment data for the HH Quality Reporting Program; collect feedback on strategies to better measure disparities in health care outcomes; and change the terminology and timeline for baseline years used to calculate performance in the Value-based Purchasing program. CMS will accept comments on the proposed rule through Aug. 16.