Home Health & Hospice Week

Pilot project cut rehospitalizations by half. Home care will play a vital role in Medi-care's hospital readmission reduction project in Texas. The three-year project will recruit home health agencies, among other providers, as "transition coaches" for patients being discharged from the hospital, reports The (McAllen, Texas) Monitor. The coaches will meet with patients before discharge and again within 48 hours after discharge. "The coach helps the patient put together a list of questions for the doctor, discusses questions the patient might have about medications and helps the patient put together a plan for self care," the newspaper says. The coach also reconciles the physician's discharge summary with the patient's goals and helps the patient put together a health record. Transition coaches helped cut hospital readmissions by half in a Denver-based pilot project run by the Quality Improvement Organization Colorado Foundation for Medical Care, a CFMC official told The Monitor. QIO TMF Health Quality  Institute is running the current project in the Browns-ville-Harlingen-Weslaco area. Medicare currently is funding 14 such projects in as many states as part of the QIOs' 9th Scope of Work (see Eli's HCW, Vol. XVII, No. 30, p. 238). They are known under the "Care Transitions" name. • Don't bank on the wage index values contained in the PPS rate notice for 2009, if you operate in certain East Coast states. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has issued some technical corrections to its Nov. 3 Federal Register notice of home health prospective payment system rates for next year. CMS should have designated Litchfield County, Conn. and Merrimack County, N.H. as rural instead of listing them under CBSA 25540 and CBSA 31700, respectively, CMS says in a post to its Web site. Manatee and Sarasota counties in Florida also were mis-categorized, CMS says. The agency will publish an official correction notice, it says. • Medicare will have to find another way to save money rather than limiting COPD drug payments, according to a new court ruling. Last month, a federal judge ruled that Med-icare can no longer use the "least costly alternative" to set payment rates for certain drugs, reports the New York Times. In this case, the judge found that certain Medicare carriers slashed payments for nebulizer drug DuoNeb. However, the judge ruled, Medicare should heed the payment rate methodology set by Congress. • Your hospice payments could look a lot different if Congress heeds the advice of an influential advisory body. The Medicare Payment Advisory Com-mission is considering recommending a payment revamp that would reimburse hospices at higher rates for days at the beginning and ending of hospice stays and at lower rates for days in the middle. MedPAC will likely vote on the [...]