Home Health & Hospice Week

Don’t forget the details of your F2F duties, with so much else on your plate.

“As a condition for payment ... prior to certifying a patient’s eligibility for the home health benefit, the certifying physician must document that he or she, or a qualified nonphysician practitioner (NPP), has had a face-to-face encounter with the patient,” reviews HHH Medicare Administrative Contractor Palmetto GBA in a new post on its website. “For initial home health certifications, the certifying physician must document that the physician, a qualified nonphysician practitioner (NPP), or a physician caring for the patient in an acute or post-acute facility, who has privileges at the facility, had a face-to-face encounter with the patient.”

Remember: “The rendering practitioner for the face-to-face encounter, author of the encounter note, must sign his or her own note,” Palmetto stresses. “Another practitioner regardless of affiliation or relationship, cannot sign an encounter note for the original author,” the MAC says.