Lawmakers investigating home healthcare companies

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate Finance Committee is investigating four for-profit home healthcare agencies over billing practices lawmakers say raise questions about reimbursement from the Medicare insurance program.

Shares of the companies -- Amedisys Inc, Gentiva Health Services Inc, LHC Group Inc, Almost Family -- fell on the news.

In a bi-partisan letter to the companies released on Thursday, lawmakers said when Medicare changed its payment rules to provide additional reimbursement to patients when they had six, 14 and 20 therapy visits, "the home health industry apparently changed their utilization patterns as a result of these payment policy changes."

Their letter follows a recent analysis about the industry in the Wall Street Journal that the lawmakers said "suggest HHAs (home healthcare agencies) intentionally increased utilization for the purpose of triggering higher reimbursements."

"These findings suggest that HHAs are basing the number of therapy visits they provide on how much Medicare will pay them instead of what is in the best interests of patients," Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus and Ranking Republican Member Charles Grassley wrote.

They also questioned marketing materials that aim to target seniors "to take advantage of Medicare payments to improve profits."

In a statement released late Wednesday, LHC Group said it would cooperate with the senators' request. It also said that home healthcare services have to be ordered by a doctor and that therapy visits were a smaller part of its business than the national average.

Representatives for Amedisys, Gentiva and Almost Family could not be immediately reached for comment on the probe.

The lawmakers' committee has oversight of the Medicare insurance program for the elderly and disabled, which covers more than 45 million Americans.

The senators also asked the companies for a variety of documents that date back as far as 2006, including data on therapy visits, lists of physicians with the highest patient referrals to the agencies, and copies of all marketing materials.

In early morning trading on the Nasdaq, shares of Amedisys were off 8.7 percent at $51.32 while shares of Gentiva Health Services were down 5.8 percent at $28.04.

Shares of LHC Group fell 3.8 percent at $34.73 and Almost Family were down 8.4 percent at $39.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey, editing by Dave Zimmerman)