Medicare Program; Home Health Prospective Payment System Refinement and Rate Update for Calendar Year 2008

This final rule with comment period sets forth an update to the 60-day national episode rates and the national per-visit amounts under the Medicare prospective payment system for home health services, effective on January 1, 2008. As part of this final rule with comment period, we are also rebasing and revising the home health market basket to ensure it continues to adequately reflect the price changes of efficiently providing home health services. This final rule with comment period also sets forth the refinements to the payment system. In addition, this final rule with comment period establishes new quality of care data collection requirements. Finally, this final rule with comment period allows for further public comment on the 2.71 percent reduction to the home health prospective payment system payment rates that are scheduled to occur in 2011, to account for changes in coding that were not related to an underlying change in patient health status (section III.B.6).