Washington A prospective payment system for home health agencies appears to be on track, according to the Health Care Financing Administration.

Officials said they intend to publish a proposed regulation for a PPS for home health agencies in October 1999 and to issue the final rule in July 2000. HCFA said the system will be based on 60-day episodes of care.

Meanwhile, Congress has introduced several bills for financial relief from the interim payment system, including the most recent, the Medicare Home Health Beneficiary Equity and Payment Simplification Act of 1999, sponsored by Sen. Connie Mack, R-Fla. That bill would eliminate the 15 percent reduction in Medicare home health payments scheduled for Oct. 1, 2000.

The bill's intent, Mack says, is to offer an alternative to a continuation of the interim payment system should the Health Care Financing Administration be unable to implement its proposed Prospective Payment System plan on time.

Meanwhile, Rep. J.C. Watts, R-Okla., proposed legislative relief to home health agencies that also would eliminate the proposed 15 percent reduction.

"I want to say to the home care folks that we are going to get some relief because we have accomplished what we wanted to accomplish in eliminating fraud and abuse," Watts said. Also in the House of Representatives, Rep. Bob Riley, R-Ala., and Rep. Bob Etheridge, D-N.C., are pushing HR2546. It calls for eliminating the 15 percent interim payment system cut to home health agencies set for Oct. 1, 2000; establishing payments for medically complex patients so they are not excluded from Medicare; and developing a prospective payment system that is based on hard data.

Earl Whipple, Riley's chief of staff, said the lawmakers are trying three different avenues to ensure the bill's passage: adding it to health care legislation, including it in budget legislation and advancing it as a free-standing bill. Their bill, Whipple said, is a companion to S1358 (Preserve Access to Care in the Home Act of 1999), introduced in the Senate by Sen. James Jeffords, R-Vt. -K.G.