Medicare Enrollment Ban Hastens Home Health Closures

Home-health agencies are closing their doors at an accelerated pace due to a multi-year ban on new Medicare enrollments in four states—Florida, Illinois, Michigan, and Texas.

Health-care attorneys told Bloomberg Law the moratorium is extinguishing good home health agencies while failing to prevent fraud, as it was designed to do. That in turn is reducing patient access to home care, with patient harm as a possible outcome, home-health association officials from two of the states told Bloomberg Law.

The moratorium prevents new home-health providers from enrolling in Medicare. It was put in place in 2013 because of the high risk ...