Home Health Stabilization Act of 2025
The Home Health Stabilization Act of 2025 would amend the Medicare home health payment system to stabilize payments to home health agencies for 2026 and 2027. It requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to provide positive adjustments in those years to fully offset certain negative payment adjustments that would otherwise reduce the national, standardized 30-day period rate under the Home Health Prospective Payment System (HH PPS). Specifically, it directs reliance on the 2025 rate as the base for 2026 and 2027, with limited adjustments and exclusions from expenditure calculations. The bill also indicates that these changes can be implemented by program instruction and clarifies that the act does not express congressional judgment on related prior rulemakings. In short, the bill is designed to prevent payment cuts in 2026–2027 that would affect access to Medicare home health services, by delaying or offsetting negative rate adjustments and stabilizing payer reimbursements to home health agencies during those years.
Key Points
- 1Special rule for 2026 and 2027: The Secretary must provide a positive adjustment to the 2026 national, standardized 30-day payment rate to fully offset the combined impact of a -4.059% Permanent Adjustment Factor and a -5.0% Temporary Adjustment Factor that would otherwise apply to the 2026 rate, as described in a specific 2025 Federal Register rule.
- 22026/2027 rate basis: For 2026 and 2027, the national, standardized 30-day payment rate should be based on the 2025 rate, incorporating the offset from the positive adjustment and updated according to other applicable provisions—except that it must not be further adjusted by certain other adjustment mechanisms referenced in the bill.
- 3Exclusion from expenditure calculations: When determining actual expenditures for 2026 and 2027, the Secretary must exclude the additional payments made under the offset adjustments, and those offset adjustments cannot be used to justify further offsets under other provisions.
- 4Implementation: The Secretary may implement these provisions by program instruction or other administrative means, rather than requiring new regulations.
- 5Legislative note: The construction section clarifies that this act does not express approval or disapproval of the related 2022 Federal Register rule or its methodology; it preserves the existence of that rule while implementing the stabilization measures.