Home Health & Hospice Week

When does a clarification hurt instead of help? If you correct or add to every medical record that gets reviewed, you may come to regret it. "With regard to supplementing documentation in preparation for ... audits, providers certainly need to proceed with care," advises Washington, D.C.-based attorney Elizabeth Hogue. "Whether or not it is appropriate to supplement documentation must be decided on a case-by-case basis." "Agencies should not be routinely making revisions to clinical records prior to sending them off" in response to an advance development request (ADR), counsels regulatory consultant Rebecca Friedman Zuber in Chicago, Ill. Red flag: "Agencies that make a lot of corrections in their clinical records will raise questions should their records be reviewed," Zuber warns. "It will look like they are writing what they want to have there, not documenting what actually occurred during the delivery of care." When correcting or adding to the medical record, [...]