The requirement for State Medicaid agencies to implement EVV for Medicaid-funded home health services is in less than a month, with a Jan. 1, 2024 deadline. Some states are already operational while others will not be able to implement on time. However, the majority of states will move forward with the requirements in January. This creates several important items for home health agencies to be aware of to ensure that there are no delays in billing or issues with denials due to incomplete or missing EVV data.

 

Late last week, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) held a meeting to discuss their draft recommendations for various Medicare programs for their upcoming annual report to Congress, which will be released in March 2024. (Slides from the hospice discussion can be found HERE.)

 

The Chair’s draft recommendation for the Medicare hospice program, which most commissioners indicated support for, is as follows:

 

“For FY2025, to eliminate the update to the 2024 Medicare hospice payment rates”

 

Although pain experiences vary widely, all patients with pain must manage its impact on their lives and emotions. We don’t often hear about pain self-management skills, although they have been described in published literature as an adjuvant way (often in conjunction with analgesics) to help patients understand and even modify the emotional components of living with pain. Many of these skills are based in cognitive behavioral therapy. This Fast Fact reviews cognitive-based pain self-management strategies for patients with serious illness. Each strategy has supporting evidence and can be employed by clinicians. Check out the full library of PCNOW’s helpful facts.