Thanks a lot...
On March 4, HCFA issued a notice in the Federal Register stating that it was rescinding the deadline for home health agencies to notify their fiscal intermediaries about whether they had been able to secure a surety bond. The catch? The submission deadline was Feb. 27-a full week before HCFA decided not to enforce it.
In HCFA's words, "Because some [home health agencies] have not been able to obtain a surety bond in time to meet the February 27 date, we are removing the date by which agencies are required to submit the bonds to HCFA and/or the state Medicaid agency."
Now, agencies will have 60 days after the publication of HCFA's final rule on the surety bond issue is published. But, so far, no publication date has been set.
"This has been awfully rough on the agencies," says Jeff Kincheloe, associate director of government affairs at the National Association for Home Care (NAHC) in Washington, DC. Because of the February 27 deadline, he says, "everybody was scrambling. Now HCFA says, 'Oh, we didn't mean it.' There's been a lot of anxiety, a lot of ulcers probably as a result of that."
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