Home Health & Hospice Week

Physicians, nursing homes and hospitals soon will receive messages from their carriers and intermediaries extolling the virtues of the Medicare hospice benefit and assuring physicians not to worry about reprisals when certifying patients for hospice care. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services instructs contractors to publish an education article in their next bulletins, post it on their Web sites and send it out to the target audience via listserv, according to March 28 program memorandum AB-03-040. The article "advises physicians that they need not be concerned about CMS penalties when certifying an individual for hospice care," the memo says. "There is no risk to a physician about certifying an individual for hospice care that he or she believes to be terminally ill," the article says. The memo and the article are at www.cms.gov/manuals/pm_trans/AB03040.pdf. HAVEN Version 6.1, which fixes some lingering bugs and adds several new features, is now available, CMS says. Home health agencies can download the latest version of the free OASIS software, and see a summary of the bugs fixed and features added, at http://www.cms.hhs.gov/oasis/havensof.asp. HAVEN 6.2 will be available Oct. 1 to accommodate the use of V codes, E codes and the new OASIS question MO245, a CMS spokesperson said at the OASIS Coordinators Conference in New Orleans April 1. HHAs having trouble using their unwieldy OASIS patient tally reports can tap a new tool provided by CMS to mine the data in them for outcome-based quality improvement purposes. The Excel workbook, available at www.cms.hhs.gov/oasis/obqi.asp, should enable agencies "to focus on patients with specific attributes and outcomes and avoid manual review of lengthy printed reports," CMS says. If suppliers submit their claims to the wrong durable medical equipment regional carrier for processing, the DMERC should forward the claim to the right carrier, CMS instructs in March 28 Transmittal No. 1791. But claims processing timeliness rules won't kick in until the proper DMERC receives the claim, the carrier manual addition says. Orlando, FL-based Rotech Healthcare Inc. has big changes planned for 2003, from "headcount reduction" to exiting unprofitable business lines. "Considerable restructuring" is required for the company to be competitive, Rotech CEO Philip Carter warns of the company that emerged from parent Integrated Health Services' bankruptcy. The shake-ups will mean flat revenues for the near future, Carter predicts. Rotech already has made headway in its goal to maximize profitable oxygen business. Respiratory therapy equipment and services revenues increased 4.6 percent for the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2002 compared to the same period in the previous year, Rotech says. DME revenues declined 22 percent in the same time period, but the company "has initiated new efforts to rebuild its DME rental business," it promises. Rotech [...]