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…
Tag: CMS
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,…
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…
CMS Updates
CMS recently updated the Code of Federal Regulations for Home Health Services (Part 484) as well as the Medicare Benefit Policy Manuals—Chapter 7 for Home Health Agencies. The changes reflect alterations in the Conditions of Participation released in the home health final rule last year and became effective on January 1, 2022. There is always…
Approved Signatures
Services and orders provided for home health and hospice require some kind of authenticating signature by the author. In this age of electronic medical records, organizations are faced with a variety of signatures–handwritten and electronic. It’s often difficult to determine what is acceptable to the Medicare Administrative Contractors (MACs). Here are a few tips. First…
COVID-19 Vaccination & Testing Mandates Suspended
On December 2, 2021, CMS released a memorandum from the Quality, Safety & Oversight Group (QSOG) and Survey & Operations Group (SOG) stating that CMS has “suspended activities related to the implementation and enforcement of the Medicare and Medicaid Programs; Omnibus COVID-19 Health Care Staff Vaccination pending future developments in the litigation. Accordingly, while these…
COVID-19 Employee Tracking
An important aspect of your COVID-19 Plan is maintaining a log of COVID-19 positive employees. This document details all your employees who have a confirmed infection regardless of the source (work-related or otherwise). Remember that this log must be consistent with your OSHA 300, 300A, and 301 forms and be maintained in the confidential medical…
Hospice Care Index
Believe it or not, the Fiscal Year 2022 for hospice begins in just over a month—on October 1st. Among the changes finalized by CMS is a new item to be publicly reported no sooner than May 2022. The Hospice Care Index (HCI), in effect, replaces the seven HIS items that will be removed from public…
CMS Emergency Preparedness Testing Clarification
CMS continues to make clarifications to the Emergency Preparedness regulation. A revision to QSO-20-41-ALL was released on June 21, 2021 and was directed to State Surveyors. As previously established, outpatient providers of services, such as home health and home hospice, are required to test their program annually. In 2019, CMS changed the testing requirement for…
