2022 Year-in-Review

By Moving Health Home|2023-01-05T18:43:38+00:00January 4th, 2023|Press release|

Since its official launch in March 2021, Moving Health Home (MHH) has made significant progress in accomplishing our founding goals, including:

Breaking down federal and state legal barriers to care in the home;
Educating policymakers about new clinical models involving the home;
Advocating for new payment models that focus on risk-sharing and incentives for in home care
and population health management;
Engaging incumbent fee-for-service providers about ways to maximize their services in patients’
homes; and
Producing and present research and evidence on care in the home.

We appreciate the engagement of our members in helping us drive this meaningful work forward.

1

Successful Lobbying Strategy Resulted in Passage of Two-Year Hospital at Home Extension – After introduction of the two-year waiver extension bill, MHH staff developed a comprehensive lobbying strategy aimed at passing the bill before the end of the PHE. MHH’s efforts were successful in passing the two-year Hospital at Home waiver extension as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023.

MHH built strong relationships with the bill sponsors and routinely engaged to support them throughout the legislative process.
Committees of health jurisdiction, including Senate Finance, House Ways and Means, and House Energy and Commerce, are critical decisionmakers. MHH developed relationships with staff on each committee of health jurisdiction to ensure support for the extension bill, including providing resources, answering questions, engaging with the Congressional Budget Office, and more. MHH staff met with committee staff on 25 occasions over the last year about Hospital at Home, including continued negotiations.
MHH staff met with House and Senate staff on nearly 100 occasions throughout the last year, including many accompanied by members.

2 Coordination with Members of Congress, in the House and Senate, to Introduce Bill to Extend the Acute Hospital Care at Home Waiver – Early on, MHH established Hospital at Home as a key policy objective, including ensuring temporary extension of the Hospitals Without Walls and Acute Hospital Care at Home (AHCAH) waivers.

In 2021, we focused primarily on policy development but started to lay the groundwork for the extension of the Acute Hospital Care at Home waiver.
In March 2022, MHH was successful in coordinating with Senators Tom Carper (D-DE) and Tim Scott (R-SC) and Representatives Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) to introduce the Hospital Inpatient Services Modernization Act (H.R.7053/S.3792). The Hospital Inpatient Services Modernization Act will establish a two-year extension of the AHCAH waiver triggered by the end of the PHE.
MHH played a leadership role in two letters to congressional leadership calling on Congress to extend the Acute Hospital Care at Home waiver, the first in January and the other at the time of introduction in March.

3 Supported the Fight Against Cuts to Home Health Services – In July 2022, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services proposed a 4.2 percent cut ($810 million) to home health services, the underpinning of home-based services in Medicare. These include in-home services such as physical therapy, occupational therapy, medical supplies, skilled nursing, and more.

MHH acted quickly to support our home health partners in fighting against these drastic cuts to Medicare home health. Our position is that Medicare and other payers need to be building on that foundation, not chipping away at it, to achieve a broader set of home-based care options for patients, which provide them and their families with better outcomes, better quality of life, sustained independence, and lower costs.
Our efforts included an op-ed in STAT News criticizing the Administration, regulatory comments advocating for another solution, and engagement with political appointees at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
MHH was pleased to see an aggregate increase ($125 million) in home health payment in the 2023 final rule. While it does not keep up with the rate of inflation, it is far better than the proposed cut that MHH fought against. To us, this means the foundation of health care at home remains intact.

Find a summary here or below of our top activities and accomplishments in 2022 in support of these goals.