Home Health & Hospice Week

If your state isn’t on the list yet, just wait.

The likelihood of your getting slapped with a crippling alternative sanction during your next survey depends partially on how comfortable your state surveyors are in doling them out.

With only 26 home health agencies getting hit with sanctions so far, the odds may seem small that you’ll face them come survey-time. But “the trend is going to go up,” warns attorney Robert Markette Jr. with Hall Render in Indianapolis. “It’s not going to stay a handful of agencies.”

Surveyors and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services are already imposing sanctions, as the data below shows. As surveyors get more comfortable with the measures, “they will impose more,” Markette cautions. “It’s inevitable to see them in all 50 states.”

Take a look at the states leading the way by already imposing sanctions:

Source: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services survey data entered into the Medicare system from July 1, 2014 through June 10, 2015.