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Home Health & Hospice Week

Regulations:

BRACE YOURSELF FOR MORE CASE MIX CREEP CUTS

Published on Fri Feb 27, 2009

CMS also dishes on COPs, survey sanctions, homebound definition. If you've been suffering under the so-called case mix creep cuts that began last year, get ready for some more pain. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is conducting analysis of patient coding and payment to determine if there has been further case mix creep for home care patients, CMS's Lori Anderson said at a National Association for Home Care & Hospice conference March 23. Case mix creep occurs when home health agencies code patients as more severe (thus costing Medicare more money) while the patients' conditions remain at the same level of acuity. Last time CMS did such analysis, it added a 2.71 percent cut to HHApayment rates in 2011. That was on top of the 2.75 percent cuts in each year from 2008 to 2010 that CMS designated in its original case mix creep analysis. CMS should know [...]
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