HOME HEALTH PROSPECTIVE PAYMENT DEMONSTRATION PROJECT.

SEC. 4027. HOME HEALTH PROSPECTIVE PAYMENT DEMONSTRATION PROJECT. (a) In General.— The Secretary of Health and Human Services (in this section referred to as the “Secretary”) shall provide for a demonstration project to develop and test alternative methods of paying home health agencies on a prospective basis for services furnished under the medicare and medicaid programs. The project shall be designed in a manner to enable the Secretary to evaluate the effects of various methods of prospective payment (including payments on a per-visit, per-case, and per-episode basis) on program expenditures, access to, and quality of, home health care, and home health agency operations. The Secretary shall assure that services are first furnished under the project not later than July 1, 1988, and, for this purpose, the Secretary may reinstate a previously awarded contract, or award a sole source contract, to carry out the project. (b) Funding.— The provisions of subsection (a)(2) and the first sentence of subsection (b) of section 402 of the Social Security Amendments of 1967 shall apply to the demonstration project under subsection (a) of this section as they apply to experiments under subsection (a)(1) of that section. (c) Report.— The Secretary shall submit to Congress, not later than one year after the date of the enactment of this Act, an interim report on the demonstration project and, not later than four years after the date of the enactment of this Act, a final report on the results of the project.