Home Health & Hospice Week

Make sure your documentation on what's unrelated to the terminal illness is airtight. Question: Our home health agency has recently been approached by hospices to furnish home care services unrelated to the terminal illness for some of their hospice patients. Is this allowed by Medicare? Louisiana Reader Answer: Medicare does allow HHAs to furnish services unrelated to the terminal illness to hospice patients, "but it can be tricky," warns Washington, D.C.-based attorney Elizabeth Hogue. "The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question is, of course, when something is related or unrelated," Hogue tells Eli. For example: Hogue recalls a patient who had a long history of osteoporosis and metastatic cancer to the bone. When she broke her hip, was it due to the osteoporosis, the cancer (which was the reason for hospice), or both? "It was ultimately attributed to the terminal illness ... and the hospice paid for the repair," she says. The Centers for [...]