Home Health & Hospice Week

Home health agencies can breathe a sigh of relief that they won't have to take on onerous new coding processes for verifying diagnosis codes with physicians. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will NOT require agencies to check diagnosis code choices for patients with their physicians for every case, every time as CMS had instructed at its OASIS Coordinators Conference earlier this month, a CMS spokesperson says. Nor will agencies have to document the interactions, since they won't be required. Conference attendees immediately protested the instructions, voicing strident opposition to the idea that HHAs have always been required to go to such lengths (see Eli's HCW, Vol. XII, No. 13, Diagnosis Coding). HHAs already beset by other OASIS burdens will welcome this clarification, since "confirming ICD codes with MDs would have been a difficult task to coordinate for agencies," notes coding consultant Joan Usher with Pembroke, MA-based JLU Health Record Systems.