Home Health & Hospice Week

Homebound demo, NPIs also addressed in Open Door Forum.

Home care providers looking for more clarity on the newly revised home health advance beneficiary notice came away disappointed from the July 11 Open Door Forum for home care providers.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued the revised ABN in the June 23 Federal Register with a deadline of Sept. 1 (see Eli’s HCW, Vol. XV, No. 24).

The most notable change was the addition of an Option Box for home health agencies to use when physicians order patients’ care plan changes, CMS’ Elizabeth Carmody noted in the forum that drew 431 listeners.

The comment period for the revised ABN closes July 24, Carmody explained. “As soon as those comments can be considered, CMS will publish final detailed instructions on the HHABN in the CMS manual system,” she promised.

CMS will issue the instructions before the Sept. 1 implementation date, she pledged. CMS will also issue an MLN Matters educational article and consider other educational efforts.

Problem: Releasing final ABN instructions so close to the deadline is leaving many home care providers in a training quandary, experts note. HHAs want to finalize their ABN policies and procedures and train staff on them in advance of the deadline, but are afraid they’ll be forced to make big changes at the last minute depending on the final instructions.

Another problem: A question from one caller pointed to the difficulty many providers are having in finding the newly revised HHABN. The instructions in CMS’ listserv message tell providers to search for the Federal Register notice of the listing, then the Federal Register notice tells them to search for the document on the Paperwork Reduction Act Web site.

CMS should post the draft form on the HHABN Web site where the other ABN forms are posted (www.cms.hhs.gov/BNI/03_HHABN.asp), protests consultant Judy Adams with LarsonAllen based in Charlotte, NC.

(For copies of the new HHABN forms and instructions, email executive editor Rebecca Johnson at rebeccaj@eliresearch.com with “Revised ABN” in the subject line.)

Other than promising final instructions before the Sept. 1 deadline, CMS offered little information on the ABN in the forum that lasted less than half-an-hour.

Other issues addressed in the forum include: • Homebound demonstration. The “Home Health Independence Demonstration,” otherwise known as the homebound demonstration, has fallen far short of its goals in attracting participants. Despite a “very massive outreach campaign,” only 51 beneficiaries have enrolled in the demonstration that Congress had capped at 15,000, CMS’ Armen [...]