Home Health & Hospice Week

$600 per patient at risk to simple counting mistakes. Can you count to 14? You may think so, but many home health agencies are having problems figuring out the 14-day window that applies to OASIS item M0175.

That's a mistake that can cost you $600 for a therapy patient and $200 for a non-therapy patient. In a new provider education article, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services offers these tips for getting it right:

Count the days. The day of home health admission is day 0, the day before the admission is day 1, and so forth. So, for a patient admitted August 20, you would look for inpatient stays falling during Aug. 6 to Aug. 19 to answer M0175.

Look at a calendar. Instead of focusing on dates, you can look at days of the week. If an admission is on a Wednesday, you look for inpatient stays back to the same day of the week two weeks ago.

Use the chart. CMS has furnished a chart that shows "the correct Day 14 for every day in a calendar year." The chart and the rest of the article are at www.cms.hhs.gov/medlearn/matters/mmarticles/2004/SE0410.pdf.