The federal government is extending its current moratorium on new home health agencies serving Medicare beneficiaries in and around selected cities across the country.
The affected areas include the Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Fort Lauderdale, Houston, and Miami metropolitan areas.
The purpose of the moratorium is to reduce the potential for fraud, waste, and abuse.
A similar moratorium on the introduction of new ambulance service providers has been extended in the Houston and Philadelphia areas.
In both cases, a moratorium against the introduction of these services was already in place. The new moratorium extends those bans another six months.
For further information on CMS’s decision, and the reasons underlying it, see this Federal Register notice.
