Home Health & Hospice Week

Reviewers want to see it all, MAC emphasizes.

Make sure you aren’t committing this common documentation error that could cost you reimbursement.

The problem: “Medical Review has been seeing an increasing number of claims in which only the original signed page of the plan of care, evaluations and/or additional orders were submitted,” explains HHH Medicare Administrative Contractor CGS. “For example — if your plan of care has a total of 4 pages, we need to see all pages of the original document sent to the physician and signed. Only sending the original signed page 4 of 4 (of a 4 page document) and attaching clean copies as your pages 1-3 is not acceptable for review.” Bottom line, “by only submitting one page of a multi page original document we cannot verify what orders the physician actually acknowledged,” CGS contends.

The solution: “We welcome the clean copy versions for readability,” CGS tells providers. “However we expect to see all included pages of the clean copy as well as ALL included pages of the copy signed by the physician.”