In a webinar presented by the National Association of Home and Hospice Care last week, Katie Wehri Director of Home Care & Hospice Regulatory Affairs at NAHC, warned hospices to examine their need to continue the use of the Public Health Emergency for COVID-19 waivers. As you know, the CMS waivers were established to assist…
High-Risk Drug Classes
As the new OASIS data set–OASIS-E—is approaching for implementation on January 1, 2023, Medicare-certified home health agencies must prepare their clinicians and quality assurance staff for the changes. One of the new items is N0415, High-Risk Drug Classes. This item identifies if the patient is taking any of six high-risk medications, and if there is…
OASIS-E
The OASIS -E is set to be implemented in January, and the CY 2023 Home Health Prospective Payment System Rate Update includes CMS’ estimated time spent for the data entry of various OASIS collection time points. This estimation is based on reported CY 2020 assessment totals per assessment type. Using this CY 2020 data, CMS…
COVID-19…Still Here
In the seemingly never-ending COVID-19 saga, the US is experiencing a surge of a new Omicron variant. Unfortunately this particular variant, BA.5 is reported to be the most contagious one so far, and currently, the most dominant strain in the United States. The CDC has a model called Nowcast which estimates the more recent proportions…
Home Health Value-Based Purchasing
The Home Health Proposed PPS Rule for CY 2023 contains some proposals for the Expanded HH Value-Based Purchasing program. The program officially begins January 1, 2023. The term “baseline year” has now been replaced with the terms “HHA baseline year” and “Model baseline year”. The HHA baseline year is now proposed to be the calendar year used…
Hospice Transfers
The new CMS rule regarding hospice transfers is set for implementation on Tuesday, July 5th. In case you missed it, the MLN Matters MM12619 was released in February. The Common Working File will no longer accept gaps of care to occur during a transfer. This means the claim will be rejected if there is a gap in…
CY 2023 Home Health Payment Proposed Rule
Last week, CMS released the CY 2023 Home Health Payment Proposed Rule. The news is not cheery. In fact, as Bill Dombi, President & CEO of the National Association for Home Care & Hospice stated, “CMS has declared war on home health care”. During the 60-day comment period which will end on August 16, 2022,…
OASIS-E Items
One of the proposed OASIS-E data items for next year is B1300-Health Literacy. This new item asks how often the patient needs to someone help them to read instructions, pamphlets, or other written material from their doctor or pharmacy. Possible answers range from “never” to “always” and includes options for the patient not being able…
Allowed Practitioners
In June, CMS made a clarification to a previous transmittal which allows clinical nurse specialists, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners to certify eligibility and order services under the Medicare home health benefit. These individuals, of course, are defined as allowed practitioners. The CMS Transmittal 11447 replaced Transmittal 11386 (previously released in April 2022) and stated…
Provider Relief Funds
If you are an organization with a fiscal year ending 12/31, now is the time to get going on your audit of the Provider Relief Funds (“PRF”) received during Period 1 and Period 2 and other HHS awards, if applicable. An audit of the HHS awards is required if your organization expended $750,000 or more…
