Home Health & Hospice Week

Back to the basics: Don't bill unless you have the doc signature on the POC. Just because the physician signature rule is an old one doesn't make your claim any less denied in medical review. The latest Comprehensive Error Rate Testing report found a problem with home health agency claims and physician signatures, reports regional home health intermediary Cahaba GBA. "Specifically,the home health agency bills the final claim prior to the physician signing the [plan of care] or there is no indication of when the physician's signature was obtained," the intermediary says in its March newsletter. In these cases, reviewers deny the claims altogether. This is a typical issue for home health agencies,says Chicago-based regulatory consultant Rebecca Friedman Zuber. "It happens to all agencies," Zuber tells Eli. And agencies might be letting this problem slide a little more these days because intermediaries haven't been doing much medical review of claims, industry [...]