Home Health Line
03/25/2013
CMS and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are urging providers to implement special contact precautions for patients infected with carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae (CRE). Failure to implement those precautions when CRE is suspected could cause infections to spread – a potentially disastrous outcome for agencies, given the high death rates associated with CRE.
 
03/25/2013
CMS has officially awarded the region D home health and hospice workload to NGS.
03/18/2013
The 2% sequestration cut, which is set to begin April 1, will be based on the day patients are discharged from home health. Where episodes begin before April 1 and end after that date, the cut will apply to the entire episode.
 
03/18/2013
Two top officers of the main enforcement bureau for patient privacy and security rules addressed the Annual HIPAA Summit in Washington, D.C. last month, giving providers some clues as to what their investigators will be looking for in the age of the “mega-rule.”
03/18/2013
If you’ve ever wished your agency had more information about patients referred from a skilled nursing facility (SNF), you’re probably not alone. Nearly a third of discharge plans for SNF patients referred to home health fell short of Medicare requirements, according to the HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG).
03/18/2013
Carefully track the number of late episodes that your agency provides. Recent attention from the HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) and CMS auditors has raised your medical review risk for those episodes.
 
03/18/2013
Adopt a process to determine which diagnoses relate to patients’ terminal illness. It’ll help you be ready for possible claims rejections resulting from recent CMS attention to hospices’ diagnosis reporting.
 
03/18/2013
Now is the time to dust off your implementation plan for ICD-10. CMS has indicated that the Oct. 1, 2014 transition date is firm, and agencies that fall behind on transition planning stand to face major revenue shortfalls when that date arrives.
 
03/18/2013
Transitioning to ICD-10 will take thorough planning, a significant amount of time, some capital investment, as well as a lot of patience and flexibility. The entire organization needs to make the adjustment at the same time, often with conflicting priorities.
03/18/2013
Responses to HHL’s 2013 predictions survey show that despite the one-year delay of  the ICD-10 transition, more than one in four agencies already have started to prepare.
 

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