Home Health & Hospice Week

Watch for these case mix additions and deletions that took effect Jan. 1. The loss of case mix points for hypertension codes 401.1 (Benign essential hypertension) and 401.9 (Unspecified essential hypertension) weren't the only case mix changes the 2012 home health PPS final rule brought about. Take note of these additional updates to the diagnosis codes eligible for case mix points. Dementia: At first the new 2012 dementia codes 294.20 (Dementia, unspecified, without beha-vioral disturbance) and 294.21 (Dementia, unspecified, with behavioral disturbance) seemed to have been left off the case mix diagnosis code list, despite the fact that the 2011 code for dementia, NOS is 294.8 was a case mix code. However, efforts to correct this problem by industry members including Eli contributing editor and coding expert Lisa Selman-Holman of Sel-man-Holman & Associates and CoDR -- Coding Done Right in Denton, Texas helped move the Cen-ters for Medicare & Medicaid Services [...]