Home Health & Hospice Week

Docs threaten to cut off home care referrals in face of burdensome new requirements. The new face-to-face physician encounter requirements may be a nightmare home health agencies can’t wake up from, but it’s a nightmare you’ll have to face head on if you want to preserve your Medicare reimbursement. Background: Starting April 1, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will begin enforcement of the face-to-face encounter requirement. Under the requirement finalized in the 2011 PPS final rule published in the Nov. 17, 2010 Federal Register, certifying physicians must see the home care patient 90 days prior to start of care or 30 days after care begins for the reason the patient is requiring home care. And the certifying physician must document the encounter as part of the certification itself or as a signed addendum to it. The documentation must include the date when the en-counter occurred and a brief [...]