Home Health & Hospice Week

Penalties may close your doors faster than termination, observers warn.There's no dodging it, but you will have a bit more time to prepare for Medicare's new alternative sanctions policy for home health agencies.The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services finalizes its sanctions policy in the 2013 home health prospective payment system final rule released Nov. 2. In it, CMS hangs onto the penalties it proposed back in July (see Eli's HCW, Vol. XXI, No. 26). They include Civil Money Penalties (CMPs), temporary management, payment suspensions, directed plans of correction, and directed in-service training."The alternative sanction rule is one of the most significant changes proposed by CMS in years," says the National Association for Home Care & Hospice.CMS wants to stagger implementation of the sanctions provisions "because implementation of the complex and far-reaching provisions of this final rule for CMS will require an infrastructure overhaul with changes to current tracking mechanisms [...]