Home Health Spending Flat As Health Care Utilization Rebounds

Home Health Care News | By Robert Holly
 
Spending on home health care stayed mostly flat in 2021, a new analysis from the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) reveals.
 
The steady spending on home health care last year came despite a sharp dip in government funding tied to the public health emergency (PHE). The decrease in PHE-related funding was generally offset by a rebounding of health care utilization across the board, according to the analysis, published online Wednesday by Health Affairs.
 
“Federal COVID relief funding had a greater impact on growth for nursing care facilities and home health care than it did for other professionals or dental services, as nursing homes and home health care agencies received a large amount of supplemental funding in 2020,” CMS statistician Micah Hartman said during a conference call with members of the media.
 
Specifically, national health expenditures on home health care totaled $125.2 billion in 2021, a year-over-year increase of less than 1%, according to the CMS analysis.
 
From 2015 to 2020, national health spending on home health care climbed from $89.6 billion to $125 billion. The largest year-over-year jump came in 2020, when spending increased by more than $12.6 billion over 2019 largely because of COVID relief.

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