Home Health & Hospice Week
OIG Keeps Pressure On Home Health, Hospice
Watchdog agency touts F2F as fraud prevention measure.
Don’t expect to say goodbye to the headache-inducing face-to-face physician encounter requirement any time soon.
In its latest “Top Management & Perform-ance Challenges” report, the HHS Office of In-spector General highlights home health as an area with high improper payment rates and a “known … fraud risk area.”
The OIG pats itself on the back for using the face-to-face physician encounter requirement as a fraud prevention tool. It also notes that rates of improper billing have gone down after instituting a temporary moratoria on HHA enrollment in fraud hot spots such as Miami.
The watchdog agency throws a spotlight on hospice fraud concerns as well, listing “insufficient monitoring of hospice service use, as well as inadequate oversight of hospice certification surveys and hospice-worker licensure requirements.”
The OIG lauds hospice fraud-fighting measures including ramping up hospice quality reporting and starting work on hospice payment reform. It also praises the IMPACT Act’s new requirements that Medicare survey hospices at least every three years and increase medical review of hospices with long-stay patients.
See the report at http://go.usa.gov/sNTF.
Home Health & Hospice Week
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