Home Health & Hospice Week

Also read up on these CAHPS, ICD-10, and homebound definition changes. In addition to payment rates, the home health prospective payment system final rule for 2012 addresses these regulatory issues: Face to face. As proposed, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has finalized a change that will slightly improve the burden associated with the physician face-to-face encounter rule that is bedeviling home health agencies. When a facility-based physician performs the F2F visit, she now has the option of completing the F2F documentation and home health certification herself or communicating her clinical findings to the community physician, who may then do the F2F and cert. CMS also clarifies that it will allow an HHA to "facilitate" communication between the facility and community physician. And it's taking the "attending" modifier off the facility physician to make clear any hospital doc can conduct the F2F. And CMS confirms that when a F2F [...]