Home Health & Hospice Week

A valid certification of terminal illness is vital to your claims and your compliance record, but hospices often find it difficult to obtain a written CTI two days after hospice care is initiated or recertified. That's when you can accept a verbal CTI, notes attorney Mary Michal with Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren in Madison, Wis. However, make sure your verbal CTIs contain these seven elements, Michal recommends:

1. Patient's name

2. Physician's name

3. Patient's terminal diagnosis or diagnoses

4. Patient's prognosis of six months or less if the terminal illness runs its normal course

5. Benefit period dates

6. Signature of the hospice staff member who receives the verbal CTI statement

7. Date the hospice receives the CTI statement.

The physician must follow up with a written CTI filed in the patient's medical record, Michal reminds hospices. Hospices can't bill until the written CTI is on file.