Home Health & Hospice Week
Change How You Answer M2420 Effective Immediately
Response 2 now applies only to Medicare home health skilled services. Add another OASIS change to the list, thanks to PDGM. A question and answer in the OASIS quarterly Q&As issued Jan. 21 tells home health agencies to change how they answer M2420 (Discharge Disposition: Where is the patient after discharge from your agency?). QUESTION 9: “For the new quality measure, Transfer of Health Information to Provider, how are we to identify if the patient was discharged to the care of another home health agency? There is no OASIS item that identifies this information,” an HHA asks the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in the nine-page, 20-question set. ANSWER 9: “You are correct that currently, there is no way to determine if a patient was discharged to a home health agency,” CMS responds. “However, the guidance for M2420 Discharge Disposition is being revised to collect this information. Effective immediately, agencies should begin using the following guidance for M2420: 1. Skilled services from another Medicare certified home health agency, and/or 2. Hospice care from a non-institutional (“home”) hospice provider. Before this update, Code 2 indicated the “patient remained in the community (with formal assistive services),” the OASIS-D Guidance Manual says. “Formal assistive services refers to community-based services provided through organizations or by paid helpers. Examples: homemaking services under Medicaid waiver programs, personal care services provided by a home health agency, paid assistance provided by an individual, home-delivered meals provided by organizations like Meals-on-Wheels,” the Manual says. “This will be important when the Transfer of Health Information to Provider quality measure data is collected, though this is planned for CY 2022,” points out Diane Magrady with Morton Grove, Illinois-based Pragma-IT. Note: The newest OASIS Q&A set is at https://qtso.cms.gov/system/files/qtso/CMS_OAI_4th Qtr_2019_QAs_Jan_2020_final_c.pdf and the OASIS-D Guidance Manual is at www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/HomeHealthQualityInits/Downloads/OASIS-D-Guidance-Manual-final.pdf.
Home Health & Hospice Week
- Review Choice Demonstration:
Overwhelming Majority Of Texas HHAs Are Opting For RCD Pre-Claim Review
More than a third of Texas agencies have entered their RCD choice so far. Pre-Claim [...] - Medical Review:
Know Your Affirmation From Your Approval Rate
Approval rates are tougher. Under the Review Choice Demonstration, choosing the Pre-Claim Review option is [...] - Demonstration Projects:
New Year Has Brought New RCD Developments
Here’s how results calculation works. Some Illinois agencies were placed in the wrong review choice [...] - Reimbursement:
iQIES Problems Persist
Keep a record of your failed OASIS submission attempts, NAHC advises. While it’s still too [...] - OASIS:
Change How You Answer M2420 Effective Immediately
Response 2 now applies only to Medicare home health skilled services. Add another OASIS change [...] - Industry Note:
OIG To Eye IRF Discharges To Home Health
Will examination lead to drop in IRF referrals? Another home health-related topic has landed on [...] - Industry Note:
MedPAC Wants Cuts
As expected, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission has finalized its recommendations to Congress to cut [...] - Industry Note:
Beware This Hospice Billing Trap
Do you know how to bill for a day when a patient changes hospice care [...] - Industry Note:
CMS Quality Conference Is Next Month
If you’d like to join in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ quality improvement [...] - Industry Note:
CMS Bungles Some MBIs
Medicare’s conversion to using MBIs rather than HICNs has been pretty smooth, but hasn’t gone [...] - Industry Note:
MAC To Docs: Get Your HH Coding Together
Do you need help getting your referring physicians to provide the documentation necessary for PDGM [...] - Industry Note:
Include IDG Support
Don’t leave out Interdisciplinary Group documentation when you respond to a hospice medical review request. [...] - Industry Note:
Hospice Notifies Families About HIPAA Breach
Instead of electronic files, it’s hard copy paper files that have led Hospice of Anchorage [...] - Industry Note:
Hospice Adds To Name
Another hospice is tweaking its name to indicate its wide array of services. Last fall, [...] - Industry Note:
Hospice Builds Facility
Nonprofit hospice provider Pathways plans to build a 12-patient inpatient hospice facility on its Ft. [...] - Industry Note:
Supervisor Pleads Guilty
A home health supervisor has pleaded guilty to Medicaid fraud in the ongoing Moriarty Consultants [...] - Industry Note:
NPR Criticizes Hospice
Mainstream media is taking another swipe at hospice. “Patients Want To Die At Home, But [...]
