Home Health & Hospice Week

Audio-only visits count, feds confirm.

Home health agencies may not have gotten what they wanted as far as direct telehealth reimbursement in the home health payment final rule for 2021, but there are still some small wins in the regulation.

For example: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services dropped its proposal to require the plan of care to describe how the use of telecommunications technology “will help to achieve the goals outlined on the plan of care,” according to the home health payment final rule for 2021 published in the Nov. 4 Federal Register.

“We will still require that the use of … telecommu­nications technology or audio-only technology be tied to the patient-specific needs as identified in the comprehensive assessment, but we will not require as part of the plan of care, a description of how such technology will help to achieve the goals outlined on the plan of care,” CMS says in the final rule. “We expect to see documentation of how such services will be used to help achieve the goals outlined on the plan of care throughout the medical record when such technology is used.”

In other words, the POC will require “only the actual visits ordered,” says Sherri Parson with consulting firm QIRT, which has been acquired by McBee. “The expectation is that the documentation is still required, but will be provided by the agency throughout the documentation of the record.”

Another example: Audio-only virtual visits also count, CMS clarifies in the final rule. “We believe that using any available form of telecommunications technology or audio-only technology (i.e., telephone calls), for certain home health services is imperative during the period of the COVID–19 PHE, and did not propose to restrict its usage beyond this timeframe,” the agency says in the rule. “Audio-only technology may continue to be utilized to furnish skilled home health services … after the expiration of the PHE.”