Surety bond final revision nearing completion
Compliance Hotline has learned that the Health Care Financing Administration's final revisions to its surety bond regulations are now in the hands of the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
HCFA won't comment on the status of the final revisions, except to say that they're "going through clearance for technical changes." But an OMB staffer confirms that his agency has "unofficially" received the document. "HCFA does this a lot," he says. "They use us as cover so that they don't have to talk about it."
Officials at the American Federation of Home Health Agencies in Silver Spring, MD have forwarded a copy of the Small Business Association's scathing letter about the surety bond regulation to the OMB, which previously had been unaware of it.
So far, HCFA has not responded to the SBA letter, and there's evidence that even days after it was sent, high-ranking HCFA officials had not even bothered to read it. "Until we sent them a copy, they weren't even aware it existed," says a source at the National Association for Home Care in Washington, DC. "And they still have nothing to say about it."
Despite HCFA's silence about the letter, Ann Howard, executive director of the AFHHA believes HCFA has no choice now but to back away from its hard-line policy against home health: "I don't see how HCFA can move forward on its surety bond track in light of the SBA's letter," she says. "Any home health agency in the country could take that letter and use it as a brief in court."
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