Home Health & Hospice Week

If you have to change your hospice patient's benefit period dates on the certification form after the physician has signed it, it won't do to just mark out the old date and put in a new one. So says regional home health intermediary Palmetto GBA in its most recent Ask the Contractor Teleconference (ACT) minutes.

Sometimes the dates have to be changed when the common working file is updated due to a submitted bill, a hospice told Palmetto. "If a provider needs to make a change to a form that has already been signed, Medical Review (MR) suggests the provider obtain a verbal order from the physician that signed that form (in this case, the certification of terminal illness) to reflect the change that is to be made," Palmetto says in the ACT minutes on its website. "For MR purposes, we would expect this to be signed and dated prior to billing the claim to Medicare for payment."