Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

Time to beef up documentation showing the need for skilled care in maintenance therapy and chronic condition cases.Good news for home health providers: You will not forfeit Medicare coverage if your patient does not necessarily improve, thanks to a class action suit. The Obama administration has agreed in a proposed settlement of a nationwide class-action lawsuit filed last year, to scrap a decades-old practice that required many beneficiaries to show a likelihood of medical or functional improvement before Medicare would pay for home care and other post acute services, reports the New York Times.Under the agreement, which amounts to a significant change in Medicare coverage rules, Medicare will pay for the services if they are needed to "maintain the patient's current condition or prevent or slow further deterioration," the newspaper says. The proposed settlement, negotiated with lawyers from the Justice Department and the Department of Health and Human Services, was [...]