Philips Comments on Medicare 2020 Home Health Payment

October 5, 2019

Philips Comments on Medicare 2020 Home Health Payment

In comments filed with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Philips Healthcare recently suggested the agency take several steps that would advance interoperability in post-acute care settings and asked it to clarify its payment policies on remote monitoring payment in such settings. Philips made the comments in response to a CMS proposal to update payment rates and policies in the home health prospective payment system for calendar year 2020.

Highlights:

Interoperability: Philips said it supported the CMS goal of accelerating the adoption of health IT interoperability in post-acute care settings.

To advance interoperability, Philips urged CMS to develop a mechanism that would allow home health agencies to obtain direct payment for remote patient monitoring. Philips said this would spur the adoption of remote monitoring and care, thereby advancing the need for home health agencies to exchange data with acute care and ambulatory providers.
Philips also encouraged the agency to include the exchange of electronic health information in the quality and outcomes reporting requirements for home health agencies.

Remote patient monitoring: Philips said it supported the CMS decision to allow, starting in 2020, the costs of remote monitoring to be factored into base rates for home health agencies.

Areas of clarification: Philips urged the agency to clarify its 2020 proposals on remote monitoring in several ways:

Make clear that remote monitoring and remote management codes can be billed by a physician for patients who are receiving home health services—not just home infusion services.
Clarify which set-up, education, and related services can be billed by home health agencies and which can be billed by physician practices.
Clarify that, because a patient may require remote monitoring for more than one clinical condition, each kind of remote monitoring may be billed and covered separately.

View Philips comments