November 6, 2014 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

This final rule updates Home Health Prospective Payment System (HH PPS) rates, including the national, standardized 60-day episode payment rates, the national per-visit rates, and the non-routine medical supply (NRS) conversion factor under the Medicare prospective payment system for home health agencies (HHAs), effective for episodes ending on or after January 1, 2015. As required by the Affordable Care Act, this rule implements the second year of the four-year phase-in of the rebasing adjustments to the HH PPS payment rates. This rule provides information on our efforts to monitor the potential impacts of the rebasing adjustments and the Affordable Care Act mandated face-to- face encounter requirement. This rule also implements: Changes to simplify the face-to-face encounter regulatory requirements; changes to the HH PPS case-mix weights; changes to the home health quality reporting program requirements; changes to simplify the therapy reassessment timeframes; a revision to the Speech-Language Pathology (SLP) personnel qualifications; minor technical regulations text changes; and limitations on the reviewability of the civil monetary penalty provisions. Finally, this rule also discusses Medicare coverage of insulin injections under the HH PPS, the delay in the implementation of the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM), and a HH value-based purchasing (HH VBP) model.

We are superseding Airworthiness Directive (AD) 2013-10-06, for all Airbus Model A330-200 Freighter, A330-200, A330-300, A340-200, A340-300, A340-500, and A340-600 series airplanes. AD 2013-10-06 required an inspection to identify the installed windshields, and replacement of any affected windshield. This new AD requires expanding the inspection area to 15 additional windshields' serial numbers. This AD was prompted by several reports of a burning smell and/or smoke in the cockpit during cruise phase, leading in some cases, to diversion to alternate airports. We are issuing this AD to prevent significantly increased workload for the flightcrew, which could, under some flight phases and/or circumstances, constitute an unsafe condition.