Deutsche Bank’s Home Healthcare Services Group

Analysis of Proposed Changes to the Federal Payment Structure for Home Health Agencies

With the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) proposing to cut home health spending by more than $6 billion over five years, Deutsche Bank’s Home Health Care Services Group needed to assess the impact on investor-owned home health provider companies that it tracks for investors. Deutsche Bank enlisted the expertise of HMP to analyze the highly complex proposed changes.

Issues

  • How to model the proposed changes in the federal payment system.
  • Completing the process in a timely manner so it provides investors with information that has strategic value.

Approach

  • Developed a multi-year database of all Home Health Agency Medicare Cost Reports filed with CMS. This approach equipped the bank and HMP with the same data set being used by the regulators.
  • HMP sorted and organized the information to analyze it by investor-owned company and developed regional peer groups.
  • HMP and the Deutsche Bank team pulled together hundreds of data elements for the analysis, with a focus on such key metrics as episodes, visits and unit revenue. In turn, it modeled the financial impact of the proposed rule changes.

Results

  • Deutsche Bank was able to develop revised earnings estimates for the home health sector and beat its banking competitors in issuing a highly focused report to investors.
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