Home Health & Hospice Week

Be careful: You must meet the requirements for COVID-19 impact.

If you’re looking for a way to abate access problems in the facilities where your patients reside, a new frequently asked question from the HHS Office of Inspector General may help.

Question: “Can health care providers and practitioners furnish services, not to exceed their scope of practice, for free or at a reduced rate, to assist skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) or other long-term-care providers that are facing staffing shortages due to the COVID-19 outbreak?” says a question posed to the OIG.

Answer: Usually, such a practice could violate the federal anti-kickback statute or implicate the Beneficiary Inducements civil money penalty, the OIG acknowledges in an FAQ set last updated April 24.“However, we believe that there are scenarios in which health care providers could work together to fill critical gaps caused by the COVID-19 outbreak to provide necessary care to vulnerable beneficiaries receiving care in a SNF or other long-term-care facility,” the OIG says.

For example, “we received a question about whether a hospice vendor that is already providing services to some patients at a SNF could furnish certain basic care needs — not to exceed the scope of the hospice’s or the hospice staff’s licenses — for free to patients who are not the hospice’s clients to help mitigate any staffing shortages,” the OIG says.

The OIG gives a qualified thumbs up to the arrangement.“In the unique circumstances resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak, we believe that these scenarios likely would present a low risk of fraud and abuse ...provided the services being offered are:

(i) necessary to meet patient care needs as a result of staffing shortages directly connected to the COVID-19 outbreak;

(ii) provided for free or at a reduced cost only when necessary as a result of the ...outbreak;

(iii) limited to the period subject to the COVID-19 Declaration; and

(iv) not contingent on referrals for any items or services that may be reimbursable ...by a Federal health care program, either during or after the COVID-19 Declaration period,” the OIG says.

Note: The FAQs are at https://oig.hhs.gov/coronavirus/authorities-faq.asp.