Home Health & Hospice Week

To avoid hassles from durable medical equipment suppliers, you should get your discharge claims in timely. So advises HHH Medicare Administrative Contractor CGS in its July newsletter for providers.

The problem: DME suppliers receive denials for supplies furnished after a patient's home health discharge, then call the discharging home health agency to complain.

The solution: "HHAs should check to ensure that their discharge claim is processed for the beneficiary in the Fiscal Intermediary Standard System (FISS)," CGS instructs in the newsletter. "This will update the Common Working File (CWF) with the date of the last billable visit in the home health episode. In addition, an appropriate patient status code should be billed on the claim to reflect the patient's status of being discharged from home health care. Once the home health claim has processed, suppliers will be able to bill for the items included in consolidated billing for dates of service after the beneficiary's discharge."

There's nothing CGS can do to remedy the situation, the MAC stresses. "Suppliers are able to bill for consolidated billing items [only] after a properly submitted discharge claim is billed by the HHA and processed in FISS," says the newsletter at http://cgsmedicare.com/hhh/pubs/mb_hhh/2012/07_2012/index.html#003.