Home Health & Hospice Week

At least you can sometimes bill for the visits. Hospices soon will begin taking a financial hit on their long-stay patients, thanks to the new face to face (FFE) encounter requirements effective Jan. 1. But the new mandate, which requires a hospice physician or nurse practitioner to conduct a FFE with a hospice patient prior to her third and subsequent recertifications, will hit hospices' bottom line even sooner than that -- in just a few short weeks. Why? Although the FFE requirement takes effect Jan. 1, hospices have 30 days before the start of a patient's third benefit period to do the encounter. That means for patients whose third benefit periods start in early January, the hospice can make the FFE in December, points out consultant HeatherWilson with Weatherbee Resources in Hyannis, Mass. Hospices submitted many comments to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services that were critical of the proposed [...]