Home Health Line
05/07/2026
The hospice industry is quickly approaching the one-year mark of using the Hospice Outcomes and Patient Evaluation (HOPE) instrument for quality reporting. As your staff continues to adjust to the new processes, you also need to consider how HOPE will impact operations moving forward.
05/07/2026
A patient is being referred to home health following a traumatic subdural hemorrhage (SDH) for physical therapy and speech therapy and is noted to have associated weakness and aphasia. How should this be coded?
05/07/2026
Agencies nationally continue to show improvement on medication management, according to the latest results on Care Compare.
04/30/2026
Reinforce documentation maintenance and storage policies as changes in hospice assessment and documentation efforts — including new technology — may create confusion that could lead to survey deficiencies and other compliance challenges.
04/30/2026
Take time during the start of care to discuss any limitations that a patient who lives alone may face, even if they’re resistant to it. 
04/30/2026
Make sure you have clear policies around patient requests for certain types of clinicians and staff, as well as policies around retaliation, after an EEOC lawsuit was announced earlier this year.
04/30/2026
Agency leaders face mounting pressure from multiple directions. Regulators are increasingly less interested in written policies or committee documentation and far more focused on whether organizations can prove that standards are executed reliably, day in and day out.
04/30/2026
Some agencies are struggling to report a timely transfer of health information to subsequent providers and to the patient, according to new data released in the April update of Care Compare.
04/23/2026
Make sure the reason for continued care is clear, particularly with repetitive tasks month after month, as a new audit shows CMS’ search for fraud, waste and abuse is now targeting home health stays for 361 days or longer. These medical reviews of years-old claims have high stakes, with Medicare contractors ready to claw back perceived overpayments.
04/23/2026
Ensure that unplanned discharges are completed properly — including the OASIS — and that all other documentation complies with CMS requirements. Failing to accurately note the patient’s status at discharge could impact scoring on publicly reported measures that drive reimbursement and star ratings.  

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