Home Health & Hospice Week

System doesn’t check for NOE-claim coding match.

Don’t cost yourself time and money for no reason, especially as you learn the hospice ICD-10 coding ropes.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services doesn’t have an edit that compares the principal diagnosis on the hospice Notice of Election with the principal diagnosis on a subsequent hospice claim, points out the National Association for Home Care & Hospice in its member newsletter.

Don’t: “Some hospices have been making corrections to the NOE when the principal diagnosis code on the claim does not match that of the NOE,” NAHC notes. “The correction to the NOE in this case requires backing the NOE out of the system, which in almost all cases results in an NOE that was not filed timely. This equates to a loss of revenue for the hospice.”

Do: “The only time a correction needs to be made to the NOE is when the information on the NOE is actually wrong at the time of the submission,” NAHC emphasizes. “If the principal diagnosis code identified at admission, and put on the NOE, is later changed but was accurate at the time of admission (based upon information that was available at the time), it is not an error on the NOE and does not need to be corrected.”