Home Health & Hospice Week

If you have an error on your hospice patient’s Notice of Election (NOE), you’ll have to cancel and resubmit it. That includes an incorrect diagnosis code, HHH Medicare Administrative Contractor Palmetto GBA says in a new Job Aide, "Canceling a Hospice Notice of Election."

For example: "Hospice XYZ submits an NOE with a transposed primary diagnosis code," Palmetto offers. "In this case, the NOE would need to be canceled due to the incorrect primary diagnosis code, and rebilled with the correct code."

However, you don’t need to cancel an NOE if a patient’s primary diagnosis changes over time. "If the primary diagnosis code submitted on the NOE was correct at the time the NOE was submitted, the NOE would NOT need to be canceled," Palmetto explains.

Plus: If another hospice served your patient before you, but didn’t submit an NOE, you’ll have to cancel yours so the prior hospice can submit theirs and bill for the time period before you admitted the patient, Palmetto directs. To avoid this problem, hospices should submit their patients’ NOEs as soon as possible, the MAC urges.