The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has updated the program manuals used by Medicare contractors in order to “clarify” that coverage of skilled nursing and skilled therapy services does not depend on a beneficiary’s potential for improvement but rather on the beneficiary’s need for skilled care. The manual update is part of the January 2013 settlement agreement in Jimmo v. Sebelius, No. 11-cv-17 (D. Vt.), which ended Medicare’s longstanding practice of requiring beneficiaries to show a likelihood of improvement in order to receive coverage of skilled care and therapy services for chronic conditions.
The Center for Medicare Advocacy, which along with Vermont Legal Aid represented the plaintiffs in Jimmo, announced that the Medicare Policy Manuals have been revised pursuant to the Jimmo settlement. The Center and Vermont Legal Aid have been reviewing and providing input on drafts of the manual revisions.
“As with all components of settlement agreements, the Jimmo revisions are not perfect,” said Judith Stein, the Center’s Executive Director. “But they should go a long way to ensuring that skilled care is covered by Medicare for therapy and nursing to maintain a patient’s condition or slow decline – not just for improvement.”
CMS states in the Transmittal announcing the Jimmo Manual revisions:
No “Improvement Standard” is to be applied in determining Medicare coverage for maintenance claims that require skilled care. Medicare has long recognized that even in situations where no improvement is possible, skilled care may nevertheless be needed for maintenance purposes (i.e., to prevent or slow a decline in condition). The Medicare statute and regulations have never supported the imposition of an “Improvement Standard” rule-of-thumb in determining whether skilled care is required to prevent or slow deterioration in a patient’s condition. Thus, such coverage depends not on the beneficiary’s restoration potential, but on whether skilled care is required, along with the underlying reasonableness and necessity of the services themselves. The manual revisions now being issued will serve to reflect and articulate this basic principle more clearly. [Emphasis in original.]
The next step in the Jimmo settlement is an educational campaign that CMS will soon mount to explain the settlement and the revised manual provisions to Medicare contractors, providers, adjudicators, patients, and caregivers. CMS’s educational campaign should consist of national calls, forums, written materials, training, and changes to its website.
At a session on the Jimmo settlement that was part of the National Aging and Law Institute in November, Stein urged attorneys to inform the Center of any cases where coverage has been denied because the patient was not improving. The Center would also appreciate any feedback on the upcoming educational campaign. E-mail cases or comments to improvement@medicareadvoacy.org
The CMS Transmittal for the Medicare Manual revisions, with a link to the revisions themselves, is posted on the CMS website. The CMS MLN Matters article is also available there under “Downloads.”
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