Home Health & Hospice Week

Confusion persists over how to handle a missed encounter and the start of care. A seemingly new face-to-face interpretation by the feds could cut your Medicare payments even further. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issues quarterly question-and-answer sets regarding OASIS via contractor OCCB. In its most recent set, the Q&As address what to do when the F2F encounter doesn't occur until the 35th day. "The previous 34 days of skilled care are not reimbursable by a Medicare payer which means OASIS data collection/submission for that previous episode of care was not required," says the Q&A issued in July. In a F2F question-and-answer set updated Aug. 10 on the CMS website, the agency tells home health agencies how to handle amending start of care dates when the F2F encounter is missed. "Once the encounter has occurred, the agency would delete the original OASIS submission (Medicare was not the payer [...]