Home Health & Hospice Week

Non-Medicare physicians now can enroll in PECOS, CMS says. Home care providers will soon see serious claims problems if their ordering physicians aren't enrolled in PECOS, but now they can get more docs signed up. Background: Starting in January 2011, durable medical equipment claims will get rejected if ordering physicians don't have a Medicare Provider Enrollment, Chain, and Ownership System (PECOS) record. And thanks to the recently enacted health care reform package, home health agencies are scheduled to go under the same edit this summer, although observers expect that date to get pushed back. Suppliers have had a terrible time getting  ordering docs to sign up for PECOS, which bodes ill for home care providers' claims under the new rule. One problem has been physicians who aren't even enrolled in Medicare. In some cases, the ordering or referring physician is not in PECOS because he works for a Veterans Administration [...]