Home Health & Hospice Week

Shoddy cost report data torpedoes industry reimbursement. If you've been cutting corners on your Medicare cost report, you might as well hand lawand policymakers the ax to chop your payment rates. Due to errors, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services can't use nearly one in four cost reports home health agencies submit for prospective payment system costing information, notes the National Association for Home Care & Hospice. This is a major problem because legislators and policymakers at CMS, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, and other government entities rely on the cost reports to make critical payment decisions, NAHC stresses. "It is imperative that we as an industry report accurate data for use in the decision making process," the trade group urges. Many of the cost report errors are "egregious," notes consultant Mark Sharp with BKD in Springfield, Mo. "In our national home health Medicare cost report database ... we [...]