Home Health Line Breaking News
02/06/2013
CMS announced the long-awaited start of demonstrations intended to show the value of bundled Medicare payments in reducing hospital admissions and readmissions as well improving care quality.
 
The initiative will test four different ways to bundle provider reimbursement.
02/05/2013
Home health agencies must use one of three new Q codes to indicate where services were provided for home health episodes beginning on or after July 1.
 
The Feb. 1 transmittal explaining the changes includes definitions of the codes.
 
02/04/2013
CMS is implementing a new system edit that will automatically return hospice claims to the provider when two billing period requirements aren’t met.
 
The edits will take effect July 1, according to a Jan. 31 transmittal.
 
01/31/2013
The rates DME providers will be paid for eight product categories under round 2 of CMS’ competitive bidding process will realize Medicare savings of some 45% compared to current fee schedule prices.
 
Furthermore, prices for diabetic mail order supplies will see a 72% savings.
 
01/30/2013
Testimony presented at a Jan. 29 meeting of the Health IT Policy and HIT Standards committees in Washington, D.C., was optimistic about the future of health information exchanges (HIEs), but also pointed to some ongoing challenges, Fierce EMR reports.
 
One of those is the need to remain financially sustainable.
 
01/25/2013
Medicare administrative contractor (MAC) Palmetto GBA has announced it’ll implement a targeted review of two HIPPS codes with high denial rates.
 
The key piece of information that’s missing is which HIPPS codes those are.
 
01/24/2013
The Chief Judge of Vermont’s U.S. District Court today gave her approval for the “improvement standard” settlement proposed by the Obama administration in October.
 
Experts say the decision could lead to more long-term care in the home health setting.
01/23/2013
You’ll need to submit a business associate agreement to HHS’ Office of Civil Rights (OCR) by Friday, Jan. 25, if don’t already have one in place, to get an extra six months to comply with new business associate regulations in the recently released HIPAA mega-rule.
 
The rule expanded the definition of “business associate."
 
01/17/2013
The Home Health Compare update on Jan. 17 brought few significant score changes, with one exception: Acute care hospitalization (ACH) now is reported as a claims-based measure.
 
As a result, the score for this measure changed from 26% in the October update to 17% now.
 
01/17/2013
Providers will have to give patients electronic copies of their health information and use “a more objective standard” to determine whether patients were harmed by breaches under the HIPAA mega-rule released Jan. 17.
 
The rule consolidates four separate rules that would significantly change how you comply with privacy and security requirements.

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