Major Revisions Made to Home Office Cost Report

The Health Group

The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has released Home Office Cost Statement, Form CMS-287-22 (“Home Office Cost Report”).  R1P248i | CMS

The new Home Office Cost Report (CMS-287-22) is effective for cost reporting periods beginning on or after October 1, 2022, and implements an electronic reporting requirement, which was not previously required.

The Home Office Cost Report, as modified, renames many of the worksheets to be more consistent with other cost report types and incorporates new reporting data.

A home office is an entity that provides centralized management and administrative services to the individual members of a chain organization.  A chain organization consists of two (2) or more Medicare-certified providers or at least one (1) provider and any other non-provider business.  To the extent that a Home Office furnishes services to a provider, the reasonable costs of such services are included in the provider’s cost report, as determined by the Home Office Cost Report.  Home office costs are assigned to all supported activities through direct assignment, functional allocations (based on established statistical basis), or pooled allocations.

The revised cost report, which will be required to be submitted electronically, incorporates Level 1 edits.  Failure to correct a Level 1 edit will result in the inability to submit the Home Office Cost Report electronically.  If claiming home office costs, a provider must ensure they are submitting an acceptable Home Office Cost Report to the Home Office’s Medicare Administrative Contractor (“MAC”).  Also, a copy of the Home Office Cost Report must be sent to each of the MACs for the chain providers.  If submitted electronically through the Medicare Cost Report e-Filing (“MCReF”) portal, we expect that all MACs are appropriately notified.  If, however, the Home Office Cost Report is filed via CD or flash drive directly with the Home Office’s MAC,  a copy of the Home Office Cost Report should be submitted to other provider servicing MACs as an attachment to the provider’s cost report submission and identified as a copy.

Effective for cost reporting periods beginning on or after 10/1/2018, for providers claiming costs on their cost report that are allocated from a home office or chain organization with the same fiscal year end, a cost report will be rejected for lack of supporting documentation if the home office or chain organization has not completed and submitted to the chain provider’s contractor a Home Office Cost Statement that corresponds to the amounts allocated from the home office or chain organization to the provider’s cost report. 

We recommend that all providers who submit Home Office Cost Reports review the revised report to ensure that data currently being accumulated is sufficient to meet the future reporting needs.  We will report additional information regarding the revised Home Office Cost Report as we further assess the details.