Home Health & Hospice Week

Is a moratorium in the industry's future?Home health agencies' lives could get even harder if the OIG gets its way.The HHS Office of Inspector General has found $5 million in inappropriate Medicare payments to HHAs in 2010, it says in a new report. The erroneous payments were due to overlapping stays with hospitals and nursing homes, and to payments made for services after a beneficiary's date of death. "Home health services are vulnerable to fraud, waste, and abuse," the watchdog agency says.More importantly, the OIG identifies six factors it uses to identify questionable HHA billing (see story, p. 231). One out of four HHAs exceeded the threshold for at least one of the factors, the report notes.The OIG is making a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to the billing errors, maintains Washington, D.C.-based health care attorney Elizabeth Hogue. The $5 million in inappropriate billing is a miniscule [...]