Home Health & Hospice Week

Don't overlook this change hidden in the PPS final rule. Get ready to defend your HHA claims if you're using teaching as a skilled service. In the prospective payment system 2010 update final rule, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services clarifies what sort of teaching counts as a skilled service for coverage purposes. "Skilled education services would be deemed to no longer be needed when it became apparent, after a reasonable period of time, that the patient, family, or caregiver could not or would not be trained," CMS says in the rule published in the Nov. 10, 2009 Federal Register. "Further teaching and training would cease to be reasonable and necessary in this case, and would cease to be considered a skilled service." Home health agencies may easily overlook this change, cautions Chicago-based regulatory consultant Rebecca Friedman Zuber. In the same section, CMS made another coverage change that will [...]