Home Health & Hospice Week

Refusing referrals may be your last resort. Follow this expert advice to head off denials for missing or late physician signatures and the fraud scrutiny that may arise from them: 1. Start with education. Home health agencies can avoid physician signature mistakes by educating staff, offers consultant Pam Warmack with Clinic Connections in Ruston, La. Don't presume that once you've covered a topic in a staff inservice that employees will retain the information, Warmack tells Eli. You should repeat training several times a year to reinforce information with existing staff and orient new staff. 2. Monitor your charts and claims. Before you send an end-of-episode claim out the door, you should conduct a pre-billing audit to check for numerous items including the physician's signature on the plan of care, Warmack advises. It may be annoying, but you cannot bill for the episode until the physician signs the POC for it, [...]