Home Health & Hospice Week

CMS wants more documentation from certifying docs. Get ready for your physician-related burden to increase, if a Medicare proposal becomes final. In its latest proposed rule on hospice payment, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services shows just how influential the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission can be by proposing adoption of some of MedPAC's recent suggestions for the industry. In an April 24 Federal Register notice, CMS proposes a requirement for physicians who are certifying terminal illness for hospice patients to include a "brief narrative explanation of the clinical findings that support a life expectancy of [six] months or less." The narrative would be typed or written on the certification form itself, CMS says. "An attachment could easily be prepared by someone other than the physician," the agency points out. Certifying physicians would "synthesize in a few sentences the clinical aspects of the patient's condition that support the prognosis," CMS [...]