Home Health Line
02/24/2014
Educate coders and intake staff to make sure they recognize whether the patient’s condition is chronic rather than acute. The condition may have been acute until the patient received treatment at a hospital.
 
02/24/2014
The prospect of facing up to 14% in Medicare cuts over the next few years may force many small to mid-sized independent home health agencies to decide whether to try to survive the cuts, sell or even close.
02/24/2014
This is a list of some of the most common codes and the average episode payment among the 170 codes dropped from case-mix status starting in January, according to data from Seattle-based OCS HomeCare.
02/24/2014
 Working with community-based organizations to recruit and hire employees who speak languages other than English will help you create a workforce that provides better care to an increasingly diverse population.
02/17/2014
Contact your software vendor, if you haven’t already, to make sure your agency can access the HIPAA-compliant system that will replace the Common Working File (CWF) in the near future. CMS’ plan to shut down the CWF in early April has been delayed; it will provide at least 90 days advance notice before the shutdown occurs, CMS announced on Feb. 13. However, agencies should ask their vendors now about any additional costs that might be involved in making the switch.
 
02/17/2014
Consider when to collect data about whether and when patients who receive opioids are given bowel regimens. This data should be collected during the 14 day admission period, beginning with July admissions to avoid claims denials. But there are some unanswered questions about this requirement.
 
 
02/17/2014
Expect stricter requirements for screening caregivers who provide home and community based care if the HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) has its way.
 
 
02/17/2014
The heavy scrutiny auditors are imposing on face-to-face documentation cost home health agencies tens of millions of dollars, and data show it is increasing.
 
 
02/17/2014
The federal government has delayed until 2016 the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requirement that home health agencies with 50 to 99 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees must offer health insurance to full-time employees or be penalized.
 
 
02/17/2014
Non-hospice providers will be permitted to administer vaccines to hospice beneficiaries, CMS announced on Feb. 6. CR 8620 reverses an earlier CR that indicated only hospice personnel were authorized to do so, saying that the Medicare Claims Processing Manual does not indicate that the vaccine may be “covered only when furnished by the hospice.”
 
 

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