Home Health & Hospice Week

Revise one discharge code and learn another. Law- and policy-makers are determined to get to the bottom of why hospice live discharges are on the rise, and new billing changes will help them. Old way: Hospices use occurrence code 42 on claims to indicate discharges due to both patient-initiated terminations and hospice-initiated discharges, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services notes in Jan. 25 Transmittal No. 2391 (CR 7677). CMS told hospices in a July 2011 memo not to use occurrence code 42 when a patient moves out of the area or when discharged for cause, starting Jan. 1. But CMS did tell hospices to use it when discharging a patient for no longer being terminally ill. New way: As of July 1, hospices must use code 42 only for patient-initiated terminations, CMS instructs in the transmittal. Hospices can also use new condition code 52, just approved by the Nation-al [...]