Home Health & Hospice Week

Are payment cuts, another Operation Restore Trust in the industry's future? Once again, a few bad apples are giving the whole home care industry a bad name. A new Government Accountability Office report eyes home health agencies in seven high-growth states -- California, Florida, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah -- and finds big problems.In its review, the GAO found claims that contained upcoding of patients' conditions and billing for services never rendered, the agency says in its study reported on in USA Today and The New York Times, "Improvements Needed to Address Payments in Home Health." The GAO also uncovered kickbacks to referral sources and patients. For example: "A CMS contractor found that only 9 percent of claims were properly coded for 670 Houston beneficiaries who had the most severe clinical rating and who were served by potentially fraudulent HHAs," the GAO notes. Painting the entire industry with a broad fraud brush [...]