Home Health & Hospice Week

Sequencing, risk adjustment not harmed by new guidance on secondary diagnosis coding, CMS official maintains. As controversy over Attachment D diagnosiscoding guidance continues to swirl, the feds areinsisting it's no big deal. When the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services revised its official guidance on diagnosis coding, known as Attachment D to the OASIS User's Manual, home health agencies were confused over what they perceived as new instructions on sequencing and M0246. Chief concerns were when to use case mix codes in M0246 when there was a V code in M0230 and what happens to risk adjustment if the code that used to go in M0246 isn't there (see Eli's HCW, Vol.XVIII, No. 5, p. 36). At the recent National Association for Home Care & Hospice March on Washington conference inWashington, D.C., CMS's Lori Anderson said agency officials found the controversy surprising. Attachment D merely reiterates longstanding coding guidance from [...]