Home Health Line
05/12/2014
Medicares hospice payments, adjusted for inflation and other factors, would rise an estimated 1.3% under the proposed payment rule for fiscal 2015. But many of the approximately 3,900 hospices are going to face tighter scrutiny of their claimed care costs and drug expenses, the proposals suggest.
 
 
05/12/2014
The squeeze on home health agencies is getting worse as the number of Medicare Advantage (MA) enrollees — now 30% of all beneficiaries — continues to surge. But some agencies have managed to thrive even though plans they contract with pay them less per episode of care than fee-for-service Medicare.
 
 
05/12/2014
Train coders to comply with etiology-manifestation coding convention, which prohibits the assignment of codes like 249.11 (Dementia in conditions classified elsewhere with behavioral disturbance) without first coding an underlying etiology such as Alzheimer’s disease (331.0), on your hospice claims. Failure to follow this rule will result in claims getting caught in an edit and returned for correction starting Oct. 1.
 
 
05/12/2014
Take a close look at your processes for communicating with hospice patient family members and providing timely care. Your ability to perform those measures will be publicly reported soon.
 
 
05/12/2014
Hospices could see new outcome measures related to symptom management, particularly pain, in the future.
 
 
05/12/2014
What’s the best way for hospices to coordinate with Part D plans regarding payments for certain prescriptions? CMS is seeking answers to that question, according to the 2015 proposed hospice rule.
 
 
05/12/2014
For those agencies using Windows XP, now is the time to purchase new computers, buy new operating systems or contract with a third-party vendor to provide future patches to protect your patient information.
 
 
05/12/2014
CMS won’t accept applications to open a new branch for agencies in Dallas, Chicago and other metro areas that are affected by the moratorium. The freeze has been in effect since July 2013 for Chicago and Miami-Dade County and Jan. 31, 2014 for Fort Lauderdale, Detroit, Dallas and Houston.
 
 

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