Pursuant to a recent CMS posting, on March 23, 2010, President Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), which creates a 3% add-on to payments made for home health services to patients in rural areas. The add-on applies to episodes ending on or after April 1, 2010, through December 31, 2016. Similar to temporary rural add-on provisions in the past, claims that report a rural state code (code beginning with 999) as the Core Based Statistical Area (CBSA) code for the beneficiary’s residence will receive the additional 3% payment. The CBSA code is reported associated with value code 61 on home health claims.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is working to expeditiously implement the home health rural add-on provision, Section 3131(c), of the PPACA.
