Are you nailing all the details for transfer patients you accept?
If you get lazy with your transfer patient charting, you could have to forfeit your payment for those patients.
Home health agencies still have disputes over patients who transfer during an episode. Inquiries about such problems are "frequent," RHHI Cahaba GBA says in its June newsletter for providers.
An HHA accepting a transfer patient must inform the beneficiary that the original agency will no longer receive Medicare payment for her and will no longer provide services to her. "We encourage HHAs to include this information in their admission paperwork," Cahaba says in the recent Newsline. And the agency's documentation must show it.
The receiving agency must also document that it checked the patient's eligibility in the Common Working File. "A screenprint is required to document this," Cahaba instructs.
Finally, the agency must document its contact with the original HHA, informing it of the transfer. "This contact documentation must include: beneficiary's name; beneficiary's health insurance claim number (HICN); name of home health staff person who was contacted; and the date and time of the contact," Cahaba says.
"Assistance with transfer disputes should be requested only when HHAs have made every at-tempt, but are unable to resolve the issue themselves," Cahaba stresses.
Resource: A new form for requesting such assistance is at
https://www.cahabagba.com/rhhi/forms/HHATransfer.pdf. • You can look up the new durable medical equipment accreditation requirements in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' updated Program Integrity Manual. Starting July 1, DME Medicare Administrative Contractors (MACs) will reject a change of ownership application if the new owner doesn't have accreditation that covers all of its locations, according to CMS Transmittal No. 261 (CR 6078) issued June 27.
And accreditation for an acquisition isn't automatic, CMS warns. "If the new owner submits an application without evidence that the accreditation is still in effect for the new owner, the application should be rejected," the agency directs the DME MACs in the transmittal.
If even as little as 6 percent of a company changes ownership, the supplier must notify the National Supplier Clearinghouse or face "revocation action," CMS stresses in the transmittal. That applies even when the company keeps the same name and tax ID number.
Watch out: Suppliers booted from Medicare rolls for non-billing will have to obtain accreditation to get reenrolled, CMS adds. The same goes for suppliers deactivated for failing to respond to a reenrollment request.
A break: However, a supplier that's been revoked but has submitted "an acceptable corrective action plan" can be reactivated with no new accreditation requirements, CMS explains.
Suppliers with more than 25 locations also have until Sept. 30, 2009 to enroll additional locations without accreditation, the transmittal reminds suppliers.
The manual revisions are at
www.cms.hhs.gov/transmittals/downloads/R261PI.pdf. • [...]
