Home Health & Hospice Week

You'll be off the hook for a therapy patient's 30-day reassessment if the patient is in the hospital, but you'll need a lot of paperwork to back it up. So says HHH Medicare Administrative Contractor NHIC in a question-and-answer set from an August Ask the Contractor Teleconference. NHIC points to a recent CMS Q&A on the topic for guidance. "Where unexpected sudden changes in the patient's condition result in a stop therapy order, we would expect to see documentation and evidence in the medical record (including a physician order to stop therapy) which would support an unexpected change in the patient's condition which precludes delivery of the therapy service," CMS says in the Q&A, according to NHIC. "We will modify our manual to describe that in such documented cases the 30-day qualified therapist visit/assessment/measurement requirement can be delayed until the patient's physician orders therapy to resume," CMS adds.