You may boost your hospice referrals if you help your referring physicians learn to navigate Medicare's physician billing system for hospice patients. "Medicare doesn't do a real good job of explaining that," noted Debra Sellers, director of home care services for St. John's Health System in Springfield, Mo, at the National Association for Home Care & Hospice annual meeting in Las Vegas. In her Oct. 4 session, Sellers recommended furnishing inservices for physicians' staff on how to bill Medicare for hospice patients' services. Resource: For a tool from HHH Medicare Administrative Contractor CGS on how to bill Medicare for physician and nurse practitioner services related to the terminal diagnosis, go to
www.cgsmedicare.com/hhh/education/materials/pdf/Physician_and_NP.pdf. A tool from Jurisdiction 4 Part B MAC Trailblazer Health describes how to bill both related and unrelated services from the physician's perspective:
www.trailblazerhealth.com/Publications/Job%20Aid/HospiceModifiersGVGW.pdf.