Home Health & Hospice Week

Agencies fail to document claims, CERT finds. Home care providers have an even larger target on their budget backs, thanks to an examination of Medicare's 2009 CERT report. In the comprehensive error rate testing report for last year, both  home health agencies and durable medical equipment suppliers ranked in the top five types of providers that received improper Medicare payments, according to a new HHS Office of Inspector General report. DME suppliers were second on the list, behind only inpatient hospitals, accounting for 25 percent of identified improper payments in the report, the OIG notes. The payments totaled $1.2 million. HHAs were fifth on the list, behind physicians and skilled nursing facilities. But they accounted for only 4 percent of improper payments in the report for a total of $185,000. Still, that sum is likely to be enough to get HHAs in law- and policy-makers' crosshairs when it comes to [...]