With CMS plotting a more than $1 billion cut in Medicare payments to home health providers, industry leaders are stressing that these cuts will cause agencies to close and patients to go without needed care.
CMS released the 2026 Home Health Prospective Payment System proposed rule on Monday, June 30, 2025. It called for a 6.4% overall reduction in home health payments.
The end result will be providers closing their doors, thus creating new home health care deserts, argued Dr. Steve Landers, CEO of the National Alliance for Care at Home, in a statement.
“We are alarmed by the negligent proposed payment update, which deepens a heartless pattern of insufficient adjustments that have already led providers to close their doors and reduce services, and now threatens to further diminish care access by compelling more agencies to take similar actions,” he says. “While we stand with CMS in its efforts to improve the quality of care and program integrity while saving the system money, this flawed and shortsighted payment update will actually increase costs to the American health care system.”
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