Home Health & Hospice Week

Agreement in class action suit should torpedo improvement criteria.Get ready to do away with the notion that your patient must improve to earn Medicare coverage for home health services.In a proposed settlement of a nationwide class-action lawsuit filed last year (see Eli's HCW, Vol. XX, No. 4), the Obama administration has agreed 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 submitted last week to the chief judge [...]