Agencies are getting their first look at projected payment adjustments for 2026 under Home Health Value-Based Purchasing.
On Aug. 21, 2025, CMS published the preview Annual Performance Report (APR) in iQIES, including performance scores on all measures for 2024, as well as the Total Performance Score for the year and the agency’s Annual Payment Percentage (APP) — an up to 5% increase or decrease applied in 2026 based on their final results compared to other agencies.
Agencies have until Sept. 5, 2025, to submit a recalculation request. This is only if an agency finds an error in the calculations. Agency errors in submitting data cannot be corrected at this point, CMS notes.
Preliminary APRs will be published Oct. 2, 2025, followed by additional layers of appeal. Final APRs will be published no later than Dec. 1, 2025.
CMS provides these tips for recalculation requests:
- CMS asks agencies to only include one agency-specific CMS certification number per request.
- If you are submitting a recalculation request due to a suspected discrepancy between measure values reported in your APR and measure values calculated internally or by your agency’s vendor, consider providing a copy of the internal/vendor report used to generate the internal data to assist CMS with investigating your agency’s request.
- If possible, confirm whether your internal data are risk-adjusted and the data source used to generate your internal measure values (e.g., OASIS data, claims data).
- Do not include patients’ personal health information or personally identifiable information.