Home Health & Hospice Week

Regulations:

Face-To-Face Proposal Could Ease HHAs'Workload

Published on Wed Jun 08, 2011

Under new rule, some physicians could report F2F encounters like NPPs.

The face-to-face physician encounter requirement is full of unnecessary burdens for home health agencies, but one of those may get lifted starting next year.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services proposes to allow certain physicians who perform the F2F encounter to report their findings to the certifying physician, just like non-physician practitioners currently are allowed to do under F2F regulations.

CMS officials have previously remarked informally that such a change is precluded by the language in the Affordable Care Act law that enacted the F2F requirement. But the agency has changed its tune in the prospective payment system proposed rule for 2012, which is scheduled for publication in the July 12 Federal Register.

"For patients admitted to home health following discharge from an acute or post-acute stay, the statutory language contains an unintentional gap in that it does not explicitly include language which allows the acute or postacute attending physician to inform the certifying physician regarding his or her face-to-face encounters with the patient," CMS says in the proposed rule. "Therefore, for patients admitted to home health upon discharge from a hospital or post-acute setting, we propose to allow the physician who attended to the patient in the hospital or postacute setting to inform the certifying physician regarding their encounters with the patient to satisfy the face-to-face encounter requirement, much like an NPP currently can."

About 50 percent of patients enter home health after such a discharge, CMS says in the rule posted for review July 5. If finalized, the new rule would take effect Jan. 1, 2012.

Note: The rule is available at www.ofr.gov/OFRUpload/OFRData/2011-16938_PI.pdf.