Home Health & Hospice Week

Therapists must learn to document better in many cases. Don’t let your focus on the face to face encounter requirement keep you from getting into compliance with another big regulatory change that hits April 1 -- therapy reassessments. In the Nov. 17, 2010 Federal Register, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services finalizes home health agencies’ requirement to have therapists -- not therapy assistants -- conduct reassessment visits on the 13th and 19th visits. In certain cases, therapists may make the visits in the 11 to 13 and 17 to 19 ranges (see related box, p. 44). CMS instituted these changes in part because of perceived abuse of therapy provision in home care. “Therapy under the Medicare HH benefit, in many cases, was being over-utilized,” the agency concludes in the final rule. The former 10-visit threshold “offered a strong financial incentive to provide therapy visits when a lower amount of therapy was more [...]