Home Health & Hospice Week

Take a look at the new guidance CMS is issuing to your surveyors. CMS issued an advance copy of the revised home health survey protocols to state surveyors, according to a Feb. 11 letter at www.cms.gov/Surveycertificationgeninfo/downloads/SCLetter11_11.pdf. The new guidelines take effect May 1.

Among the changes to the interpretive guidelines is the addition of CMS's prohibition on physician signature stamps. "HHAs may not accept stamped physician signatures on orders, treatments, or other documents that are a part of the patient's clinical record," the revised guidelines say.

CMS also revised the definition of the standard survey "to increase the survey's focus on those standards most directly related to patient care processes," the agency says in the letter.

Also: "We have increased the use of information gathered from HHA staff interviews as a data source, minimized review of non-clinical record documentation, provided more specific guidance for expanding the standard survey to partial extended or extended status, [and] added guidance for issuing standard and condition-level deficiency citations," among other changes, the letter adds.