Home Health Line
05/09/2016
Begin measuring the rate of improvement for patients with pressure injuries — and pay close attention to variables such as patients’ age and comorbid diseases. These steps will help your agency prepare for when the new quality measure involving skin integrity takes effect next year.
05/09/2016
Scrutinize physicians’ signatures and handwriting when responding to documentation requests during CMS’ ongoing “Probe and Educate” documentation review.
05/09/2016
If you uncover a large or systemic billing problem that led to overpayments, consider conducting statistical sampling to quantify the total amount of overpayments and the amount you owe CMS.
05/09/2016
Get a physician to confirm that a patient’s “lung mass” is actually cancer before coding it as such on the hospice claim, or prepare to receive auditor scrutiny.
05/09/2016
by: CMS
Several new measures are expected to be in place in the next several years to meet data standardization requirements called for in the IMPACT Act.
05/09/2016
by: HHL’s 2016 Referrals Survey
About 63% of home health agencies have leveraged hospital readmission rates in response to the hospital requirements to reduce 30-day readmissions. And about 22% of agencies haven’t yet but plan to do so. That’s according to the 103 respondents to a question on HHL’s 2016 Referrals Survey.
05/02/2016
When answering OASIS items M1340 (surgical wound) or M1342 (status of most problematic surgical wound), note that if a surgical wound is open at opposite ends with an area of intact tissue in between, it is still addressed on the OASIS assessment as one surgical wound.
05/02/2016
The percentage of agencies that received HHCAHPS star ratings and earned five stars dropped to 17.5% in April, compared with the 37.5% of agencies that stood out in January.
05/02/2016
Make sure you’re closely tracking the care various disciplines including LPNs and aides provide hospice patients during the last days of life.
05/02/2016
Medicare’s hospice payments, adjusted for inflation and other factors, would rise an estimated 2% in 2017, according to the proposed hospice payment rule posted April 21.

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