Summary: How well does the Community Health Accreditation Program ensure that home health agencies adhere to Medicare conditions of participation? GAO found that the Health Care Financing Administration's (HCFA) evaluation of the program's effectiveness is inadequate. HCFA determined that the program's standards were similar to Medicare conditions of participation and, where differences existed, the agreed-upon modifications to the program's standards were documented. But other areas cited in the proposed regulation, such as examining the accrediting organization's staff and other resources, received little or no evaluation. While HCFA has sought to address these issues, it plans no further program evaluation because it believes that its earlier work, together with GAO's, adequately evaluates the program's ability to ensure that Medicare conditions of participation are met. But GAO's work was not intended to be a detailed evaluation of the program, and GAO believes that HCFA should do a comprehensive evaluation before granting the program deemed status.
