Home Health & Hospice Week

One agency tells CMS 98% of F2F paperwork isn't adequate. Physicians' inability or unwillingness to fill out face-to-face encounter paperwork correctly will mean a major home care access problem for beneficiaries and a huge financial hit for home health agencies. That's what multiple providers and their representatives told Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services officials at the National Association for Home Care & Hospice's annual March on Washington conference, in a standing room-only March 28 session. The Visiting Nurse Association of Mercer County in Trenton, N.J. has spent four months intensively educating referring physicians on this issue, CEO Joanne Ruden told a CMS panel. The VNA has used powerpoint presentations, letters, examples, and repeat education to try to get the message about F2F requirements across to physicians. After all that effort, the VNA is seeing 21 percent of its F2F paperwork not returned at all, Ruden told the CMS reps. [...]