Home Health & Hospice Week

Should you hold off on admitting a patient until the FFE can be done? Starting Jan. 1, you may be between a rock and a hard place if you're asked to admit an actively dying patient to hospice who has been on service before. Why? The new hospice face to face encounter (FFE) requirement mandates that a hospice physician or non-physician practitioner perform the FFE visit before 180-day and later recertifications, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services noted in the Dec. 1 Open Door Forum for home care providers. That means if a patient was on another hospice's (or your own) service before, then revoked or transferred and will need a recert past the 180-day mark, the FFE must be completed before the benefit period starts. Exception: If the patient is transferring from another hospice that has done the FFE already, then the new hospice doesn't have to do [...]