Homecare Homebase Releases 2026 Home Health Impact Model

DALLAS—Homecare Homebase (HCHB), a software provider for home-based care, released its 2026 Home Health Impact Model along with a new suite of advocacy dashboards, both available within its HCHB Analytics platform. These tools equip home health agencies with data-driven insights to assess how the recently proposed payment changes from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) may impact reimbursement, operations and financial planning.

“With nearly half of Medicare home health data running through our systems, we’re providing agencies the tools they need to interpret these cuts, which represent one of the most aggressive reimbursement changes in recent years,” said Luke Rutledge, president of Homecare Homebase. “As the largest software partner in the space, we believe we have the responsibility to lead the industry with evidence-based advocacy, guidance and support.”

While CMS estimates a 6.4% overall reduction in home health payments for 2026, including a permanent adjustment of -4.059% and a temporary cut of -5.0%, HCHB said its impact model allows providers to go beyond the surface of how this impacts organizations and patient care. The tool aims to enable agencies to evaluate the potential implications of these adjustments through dashboards and analytics, built on real client data.

The impact model details insights on revenue-affecting elements of the patient-driven groupings model (PDGM), such as standard payment rates, per-visit rates, case-mix weights, LUPA thresholds and add-ons, wage index, functional scores, comorbidity adjustments, labor portion and fixed-dollar loss (FDL) ratio. Along with these metrics, agencies can compare impact by provider or region, highlighting dominant drivers of impact variability across different geographies.

To support client advocacy, HCHB’s new advocacy dashboards use national data to highlight the real-world impact and scope of CMS policy assumptions and methodologies, giving agencies evidence to inform responses and comment letters. 

The dashboards include:

• Referral Conversion: Tracks the decline in home health referral conversion rates amid staffing shortages and rising costs, illustrating patient access concerns.
• Cost vs. Reimbursement: Compares inflation and operational costs with stagnant reimbursement rates, visualizing the growing financial gap.
• Clinical Group Behavior: Analyzes diagnosis changes between field entries and final claims to counter CMS’s assumptions that providers are gaming the system. HCHB’s data shows such behavior is not happening.

HCHB said it is also working closely with the National Alliance for Care at Home and plans to submit a comprehensive comment letter to CMS, grounded in national data from its client base. For more information, visit hchb.com.