Flu vaccines, homebound demonstration details also revealed in forum. Don't start revamping your policies and procedures just yet based on the online State Operations Manual.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is making a number of corrections to the on-line SOM. When CMS switched from the paper to online manual earlier this year, the agency left out "strategic pieces" and made some typos, a CMS official acknowledged in the Sept. 22 Open Door Forum for home health.
One "major error" was "an omission of the Medicare conditions of participation at 484.10(e)(2) requiring a home health agency to notify patients verbally and in writing of any changes in their payment sources," the National Association for Home Care & Hospice notes on its Web site.
Another error apparently is the SOM's call for physician orders every time an HHA discharges a patient or reduces services before the end of the episode. "Nothing has changed," the official insisted in the forum that drew more than 200 participants.
CMS is working on a corrected and complete manual, the source added. The flawed version of the SOM is available at www.cms.hhs.gov/manuals/107_som/som107index.asp.
Other topics addressed in the forum include:
CMS eventually will fund 10 to 12 projects under the program, the official said. And while other government-funded DM programs may overlap geographically with the CCIP projects, they won't overlap patient populations, the source assured listeners.