Home Health & Hospice Week

Craft your policies & procedures carefully. Use these expert tips to make sure you're complying with the new long-term care reporting requirement and preserving your LTC facility relationships: 1. Craft your policy and train on it. "Policies should clearly spell out an employee's reporting obligation, to whom they should make the report, and how quickly the report should be made," counsels attorney Robert Markette Jr. with Benesch/Dann Pecar in Indianapolis. (For specifics of the new Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' requirement, see story, p. 225.) Then make sure employees understand the policy with specific training. The training will most likely be recurring, Markette offers. 2. Emphasize the reporting chain. "Hospices should train their staff members to report to management of the hospice first," recommends Washington, D.C.-based health care attorney Elizabeth Hogue. The survey and cert memo spells out that requirement. 3. Coordinate with the long-term care facility. Including nursing [...]