Regulatory Compliance
10/17/2024
Coders could see new codes to capture inflammatory breast cancer if a proposal is approved as presented during the September ICD-10 Coordination and Maintenance Committee meeting. This is one of more than 35 proposals that were presented.
10/03/2024
Don’t rush into Medicare Advantage (MA) contracts without taking the time to decide if the terms are right for your home health agency. Agencies that sign the first contract they come across without evaluating other options often get stuck with less-than-ideal terms and little wiggle room.
09/26/2024
When it comes to HIPAA compliance, it’s not enough to train staff once at orientation. Refreshing your training materials to reflect updated policies and repeating the necessary information will hammer home the importance of following privacy procedures.
09/26/2024
Inspections from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration can come at any time. If an inspector comes by tomorrow, there’s always a chance you’ll be dinged for something big, even if you’ve escaped previous inspections unscathed.
09/26/2024
Query the provider for further clarification when documentation states “diabetes mellitus without complications” but the patient is also documented as having another condition that can be linked under the “with” convention.
09/19/2024
Closely review the reasoning behind payment denials as several different CMS contractors have been basing decisions on Conditions of Participation that should be unrelated to requirements for payment.
09/19/2024
Coders will be able to capture a post-acute encounter for sepsis aftercare with new code Z51.A (Encounter for sepsis aftercare), when it takes effect Oct. 1. This code will be helpful with capturing cases where the provider has documented the sepsis as “resolved” but the reason for the home care admission relates back to the sepsis.
09/12/2024
An increase in the number of agencies hiring more remote coders was among the trends identified in DecisionHealth’s 2024 Home Health Coders’ Salary Survey. This could have an impact in two ways — more competition among individual coders for work and decreased professional oversight.
09/12/2024
Rising inflationary costs and decreased Medicare reimbursement may be fueling the continuous movement of agencies turning to outsourcing their coding.
08/29/2024
New codes to better capture intervertebral disc degeneration of the lumbar and lumbosacral regions will be available for use come October. These new codes will be based on whether the patient has discogenic back pain, lower extremity pain or no mention of either type of pain.

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