Home Health & Hospice Week

Don't be too sure that your visiting home care staff aren't eligible for workers' compensation if they get into an accident on their way to their first visit or coming home from their last.

Usually, under the "coming and going" rule, workers comp doesn't apply when employees are traveling to and from work. But that wasn't the case for a Connecticut home care worker hit by a car while crossing the street on the way to her first visit of the day, according to an Aug. 3 decision from the Connecticut Court of Appeals.

Because Rose Labadie was a home care worker, traveling to patients' homes was "integral to the service provided by her employment," the court says. So she deserves workers' comp from Norwalk Rehabilitation Services Inc. for the injuries she sustained in the February 1998 accident, the court says in the decision at www.jud.state.ct.us/external/supapp/Cases/AROap/AP84/84ap396.pdf. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services'  has increased the number of power wheelchair HCPCS codes it is proposing from 18 to 33, the agency announced in the Sept. 1 meeting in Baltimore on the changes (see Eli's HCW, Vol. XIII, No. 31, p. 243). That increase includes five new codes for pediatric chairs, notes the American Association for Homecare.

CMS plans to issue its draft codes and wheelchair coverage guidance by next spring, it said. The Restore Access to Mobility Partnership (RAMP) coalition wants CMS to make sure the new codes are a good match for current technology and practice; set an adequate weight limit for standard categories; and modify the basic equipment package, RAMP says.

How closely are you keeping tabs on your financial executives? The former chief financial officer of the Lancaster, PA Visiting Nurses Association will spend at least nine months in jail and pay back more than $250,000 he stole from his employer, reports the Lancaster New Era. "This has had a horrific effect on the morale of the workers at the VNA," the district attorney told the judge in the case against Ricky Brubaker.

Brubaker's scheme started to unravel in May 2003, when a bank investigator questioned two of the VNA's checks deposited into Brubaker's personal account, the paper reports. Wondering what your surveyors will be looking for? Home health agencies can now check out surveyors' OASIS worksheets on CMS' OASIS Web site at www.cms.hhs.gov/oasis/hhtrain.asp. Lone Star state providers have double the reason to make sure they submit extra-clean claims - double the number of fraud cases opened and prosecuted, and twice as many criminal charges filed in 2004.

Texas' Medicaid fraud control unit will accept a reward Sept. 20 for record performance in criminal fraud enforcement for 2004. The MFCU, which opened eight new field offices this year, increased its [...]