Home Health & Hospice Week

Industry Notes:

Home Health Surveyors Get Updated Marching Orders

Therapists finally get more leeway for medication reconciliation.

Check out a new Medicare manual revision, if you want to know how a surveyor will approach your survey when they next come knocking.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has issued revisions to Appendix B of the Medicare State Operations Manual, which covers surveys of home health agencies.

What’s included: “The updated interpretive guidelines and updates to Appendix B of the SOM includes conforming revisions to the regulatory tags and interpretive guidelines following several final rules which have updated Conditions of Participation,” notes trade group LeadingAge on its website. “Additionally, CMS is also combining the HHA survey protocol and interpretive guidelines into one document, updating Level 1 tags, and making clarifications and technical corrections to other guidance areas based on stakeholder feedback,” it says.

“CMS has made several positive changes to the appendix, both in terms of layout and substantive changes to several of the interpretive guidelines,” the National Association for Home Care & Hospice praises in its member newsletter. For example, “CMS has modified the guidance to no longer require the RN review the medication list in therapy cases,” NAHC points out.

In other words: “You no longer require a nurse for Medication Reconciliation,” cheers K&K Health Care Solutions in its electronic newsletter.

The 128-page memo is at www.cms.gov/files/document/ qso-24-07-hha.pdf.

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