Home Health & Hospice Week

CMS expects you to be issuing ABNs more than twice per episode, on average. You might want to put off stocking up on home health advance beneficiary notice forms. Office of Management and Budget approval of the current HH ABN form expires Aug. 31 and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has proposed some minor changes for the new form that will take effect in September. Home health agencies won't have to wait until the fall to implement the new forms, however, CMS says in documents supporting its May 15 Federal Register notice about the change. "HHAs may begin using the reformatted HHABN as soon as possible," CMS explains. "Continued use of either form remains acceptable through a transitional period that is dependent on OMB approval of the reformatted version." Stay tuned for exactly what that transitional period date will be, CMS says. Tweaks: The minor changes CMS proposes [...]