Home Health & Hospice Week

CMS weighs in on handing out sample documentation.Medicare officials insist that physicians' documentation of the face-to-face encounter should be quick and easy, but many home health agencies are having a much different experience when trying to solicit that documentation from their docs.In its latest set of questions-and-answers about the F2F requirement, a provider asks the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, "Is it allowable for a home health agency to provide a certifying physician and his or her office support staff, a completed 'sample' face-to-face encounter documentation to use as a guide for how to complete actual face-to-face documentation?"OK: Some types of sample documentation would pass muster, CMS indicates. F2F documentation must reflect the physician's "experience with the patient. A home health agency providing physicians with sample face-to-face documentation as a guide to what would be considered acceptable face-to-face documentation to assist them in preparing their particular face-to-face documentation for [...]