Home Health & Hospice Week

Make sure your physicians are enrolled well ahead of time.

The upcoming Medicare claims edits that will check for referring physicians' PECOS enrollment may make you nervous, but at least they won't drop on you at a moment's notice.

Background: In a rule published in the Ap-ril 27 Federal Register, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced its intentions to move forward with the so-called PECOS edits that were postponed last year. The edits could bring some agencies' cash flow to a screeching halt if their docs are not enrolled in Medicare's online enrollment system.

No date to activate the PECOS edits has been set, a CMS official has told the National Asso-ciation for Home Care & Hospice. And the agency will provide a minimum advance notice of 60 days before activating the edits, NAHC reports.

Tip: For you to get paid, the ordering physician will have to be enrolled in PECOS for the entire episode of care, CMS reportedly told NAHC.

Do this: "Home health agencies should immediately begin checking every physician's Medicare enrollment status in the Ordering and Referring Physician report," NAHC urged when the final rule came out. "The reports will be updated weekly." The report is at www.cms.gov/Medicare/Provider-Enrollment-and-Certification/MedicareProviderSupEnroll/MedicareOrderingandReferring.html under the "Downloads" section.