Update on Home Care Uniform Billing Rate Codes

Last week LeadingAge New York hosted a meeting with several home care associations to finalize the suggested home care uniform billing rate codes. As a reminder in last year’s state budget, the governor signed into law that there would be universal standard billing codes for home care by Jan. 2016. The universal billing codes were meant for agencies under contract or agreements with Medicaid managed care plans and managed long term care plans. Ever since it was signed into law, LeadingAge NY has been working on developing the codes.

LeadingAge NY members and others who served on the Home and Community-based Care workgroup suggested this change for uniform billing rate codes. After it was signed into law, we surveyed members on their rate codes and developed a spreadsheet which was shared with the Department of Health (DOH). DOH consolidated the codes and asked the plans to suggest their codes with comments. At last week’s home care meeting, we arrived at a consensus for two or three sets of uniform codes.

The next step in this process will be for DOH to confer with plans once again to try to obtain consensus of billing codes that the majority of plans and home care providers can utilize. We will continue to keep members posted on the development of home care uniform billing rate codes.

Contact: Cheryl Udell, cudell@leadingageny.org, 518-867-8871