DOH Resumes Roll-Out of Home Care Cost Report
The Department of Health (DOH) is resuming its roll-out of the new Home Care Cost Report as required by the 2018-19 State Budget. Many providers attended full-day workshops offered by DOH in February and early March 2020, prior to the arrival of COVID-19, to review the components of the reporting tool.
DOH will be issuing a Dear Administrator Letter (DAL) soon to announce the roll-out and training opportunities to get providers up to speed. The deadline for report submission will be set for Oct. 31, 2020. Members should expect a late May relaunch session, followed by an opportunity for providers to obtain their web-based tool credentials to access the reporting tool. Another four-hour virtual workshop is expected to be scheduled, followed by a significant number of outreach sessions and web-based tool walk-through videos carried out from June through the fall.
LeadingAge NY, along with home care provider associations, communicated concern with resuming the roll-out during the COVID-19 State of Emergency, in addition to recent budget cuts and the Fiscal Intermediary (FI) and Licensed Home Care Services Agency (LHCSA) authorization processes. We asked the Department to consider the following:
- Reconvene the Home Care Cost Report Workgroup to provide feedback;
- Assure providers operating in good faith that they will not be penalized in rates or on survey audits for submitting late or incomplete data, including Office of the Medicaid Inspector General (OMIG) awareness and approval of assurance;
- Consider allowing providers to report only rate setting schedules when all schedules cannot be completed and ensure that OMIG will not take action;
- Provide additional training and resources, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), and timely responsiveness to questions;
- Carry out a more formal approach to communications that providers can reasonably trust; and
- Consider consolidating the cost report with the statistical report on the same platform to minimize duplication.
The report will apply to Certified Home Health Agencies (CHHAs), LHCSAs, and Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP) FIs and require variations in reporting based upon the services offered. This report will replace the Personal Care Provider Cost Report and the non-hospital-based CHHA Cost Report. While for CHHAs the report will streamline some of the current cost reporting requirements, this will mark the first time that FI and LHCSA providers will be required to submit comprehensive cost reports and will markedly increase State insight into the financial condition of these providers. It will apply to providers statewide. Audits of the submitted forms will be carried out by KPMG; thus, the forms will no longer need to be certified by a CPA prior to submission.
LeadingAge NY will keep members informed as the reporting requirement is rolled out. Please contact us if you have questions or concerns.
Contact: Meg Everett, meverett@leadingageny.org, 518-929-9342