Home Health & Hospice Week

For example: "FISS is not recognizing that the units for [hospice continuous care] revenue code 0652, which are represented in 15-minute increments, reflect a full day," regional home health intermediary Cahaba GBA says on its website. Thus claims with that code are incorrectly receiving reason code 31503 and returning to provider.

Another problem: "Home Health claims and RAPs that were received on January 3 through January 5 may have processed with incorrect units," HHH MAC NHIC says in a Jan. 25 e-mail to providers. But at least this problem isn't messing up your payment, "since submitted units are not used in the calculation of reimbursement for Home Health claims and RAPs," NHIC explains.

Don't get thrown when the units show up as duplicate rejections on future remittance advices (RAs) when NHIC reprocesses the claims to correct the problem, the MAC advises. "There is no need to be concerned about this. It will not in any way negatively impact those providers in the future and there is no need for them to take any action," NHIC says.

Additional claims glitches include home health claims for 2010 services receiving 2011 payment rates if they processed after Jan. 1; rate reductions for outpatient therapy furnished in the home; and incorrect claims rejections for overlapping episodes, Cahaba reports. Some of the problems will be fixed with the April system update.

But at least one of your problems has been eliminated, thanks to CMS simply deactivating the code. After trying an unsuccessful fix for incorrect

34919 errors, CMS temporarily is lifting Present on Admission (POA) reason codes 34919 and 34931, contractors say.