Home Health & Hospice Week

Welcome reporting reprieve -- but stay vigilant, experts warn.

The feds are giving hospice providers a little extra time to get up to speed on new claims reporting requirements--but not much else in the way of concessions.

Extension: On Nov. 2, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced that it would phase in a new reporting requirement for Medicare-certified hospice providers. Instead of making the reporting of new information on hospice claims mandatory on Jan. 1, the agency is giving hospices a choice. They may voluntarily begin reporting the additional information on Jan. 1 but have until July 1, 2008 before the requirement becomes mandatory.

Stakeholders including National Hospice & Palliative Care Organization, the Visiting Nurse Associations of America and the National Association for Home Care & Hospice met several times with CMS in recent months to push for an implementation delay (see Eli’s HCW Vol. XVI, No. 35).

“This is a step in the right direction,” NHPCO’s Jonathan Keyserling tells Eli. “We appreciate the de-lay and encourage our members to comply with the voluntary date, if feasible.”

There’s more work to do, however. “We still have fundamental issues with the depth and breadth of the data that they are requesting,” says Keyserling.  NHPCO will “seek comprehensive data collection that paints a more complete and definitive picture of the hospice community and its services.”

The industry’s ability to do so could prove critical. Underlying the new reporting requirement is “an unease within the Department of Health and Human Services about the sufficiency of the services provided to hospice patients, particularly those residing in nursing facilities,” says attorney Deborah Randall of Arent Fox in Washington, DC. “Close attention to the matter--and the quality of care issue imbedded in it--is needed by all hospices,” she urges.

So far, CMS is budging only on the effective date--not what hospices must report. “This revision changes the effective date of Transmittal 1304 for additional service data on the claims only,” the agency said in announcing the change.

Resources: To read the revised Transmittal 1304, go to www.cms.hhs.gov/Transmittals/2007Trans/list.asp. CMS will continue to address providers’ concerns in a Q & A document available at www.cms.hhs.gov/center/hospice.asp.