Home Health & Hospice Week

Sequestration will figure into your cap liability sooner.

With hospices’ cap self-reporting deadline fast approaching on March 2, now’s a good time to review the basics and take into account new changes.

Reminder: The cap is pushed from its usual Feb. 28 deadline thanks to a combination of leap year putting the due date on Sat. Feb. 29, and Medicare pushing the date to the next business day on Mon. March 2 (see Eli’s HCW, Vol. XXIX, No. 2).

Another cap-related deadline is pushed forward for a segment of hospice providers, however. HHH Medicare Administrative Contractor National Government Services is “changing the timing of the final hospice cap reviews,” it says in a Feb. 10 post to its website. “The final hospice cap review will now take place at the time of the hospice cap self-reporting review.” In other words, “the final hospice cap review will take place during the first quarter of the calendar year versus during the fourth quarter of the calendar year.”

NGS is “also merging our hospice cap self-re­porting confirmation letter with the final hospice cap letter, the MAC explains. “These changes will make it easier for hospice providers to understand the cap information, as they will receive fewer letters and fewer demand requests. This will also result in a reduction in the number of extended repayment requests.”

Hospices are notified of any outstanding cap liability — including any liability related to the 2 percent sequester — at the final hospice cap review, the National Association for Home Care & Hospice points out.

What it means: “If your self-report indicated a liability, that liability will be increased immediately upon review by NGS” for sequestration, explains consulting firm The Health Group in its electronic newsletter. “Additionally, it is possible that your self-report may not reflect a liability; however, with the revision to appropriately handle sequestration, the hospice may have a liability.”

Watch for: “We have hospice clients who have already received the results of the initial review for the 2019 cap year, which differ from the self-report filed,” reports The Health Group in Morgantown, West Virginia.