Home Health & Hospice Week

Complaints pile up about the agency's regulatory relief in the face of natural disasters.

Providers furnishing home care in the face of a hurricane have their work cut out for them--but the feds don't seem to be helping lighten that load.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has denied an emergency oxygen waiver request for hurricane-harried Florida.

In the wake of Hurricane Wilma, the Florida Association of Medical Equipment Services asked CMS to allow durable medical equipment companies to provide emergency oxygen to Medicare beneficiaries without a prescription. But the agency said it would not make any blanket waivers and that providers should instead contact their regional offices to report problems.

The group is asking its members to contact their legislators about the issue.

Likewise, the National Association for Home Care & Hospice isn't pleased with CMS' response to its Hurricane Katrina requests. A recent addition to CMS' Katrina Q&As "offers minimal relief," NAHC says. The association asked CMS to lift the partial episode payment (PEP) policy for evacuated patients, "but CMS refused to honor this request," it notes.

The agency also shot down a bid to expand the role of nurse practitioners and other physician auxiliaries in ordering home care. And "CMS did not relax current regulations applicable to hospice providers in any way," the association rails.

The new Q&As are online at www.cms.hhs.gov/katrina.

Despite the industry's hurricane-related regulatory complaints, Southern Florida HHAs forged ahead in the face of Hurricane Wilma destruction.
 
Traffic jams caused big problems for traveling home care workers, reports the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Without functioning traffic lights after Wilma, nurses took 10 hours to see five patients instead of the usual eight to 10 patients, Vivian Kaplan, owner and administrator of Elite Home Health, told the paper.

Elite nurses visited patients starting the day after the storm and walked into neighborhoods that were blocked to traffic, the Sun-Sentinel says. Caregivers with National Home Care in Broward County stayed with patients up to four days to help them ride out the storm, said Administrator Michael Greaves.

Long lines at the gas pump post-hurricane were a big pain for home care workers. Elite clerical workers waited in gas lines for up to four hours to fill up visiting nurses' tanks, according to the newspaper. • Medicare's free HAVEN software has caught up with the new diagnosis codes that took effect Oct. 1. HHAs can download a new code database for HAVEN, which transmits OASIS data, at www.cms.hhs.gov/oasis/hhnew.asp.

"Once the new [database file] has been installed, warning messages will be generated for assessments containing ICD-9-CM codes that are invalid," CMS explains. "Assessments with invalid ICD-9-CM codes will be accepted when submitted." • Missouri DME providers could soon face competitive bidding at the state [...]