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Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

Kickbacks:

Follow The Rules When Furnishing Bridge Services

Published on Wed Dec 12, 2012

Hospices: Get OIG approval prior to offering free services. Just because the OIG put its stamp of approval on a program in which volunteers offered non-skilled services to terminally ill patients who did not qualify for hospice care, don’t imagine that you have carte blanche to offer free services to patients. These free services can be viewed as kickbacks. 1. Delineate services. A big reason the HHS Office of Inspector General approved a hospice’s request for a free bridge program is because it offered low-monetary-value services provided by volunteers, hospice legal experts point out. Don’t just assume you can water down your regular hospice services. The "OIG has stressed that the program must be for volunteered services … of a non-skilled, non-homecare or hospice-like content," counsels attorney Deborah Randall with Deborah Randall Consulting in Washington, D.C. The programs the OIG has approved are "fundamentally a friendly visitor/companion type service with [...]
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