Home Health & Hospice Week

Rule should be out any day, feds say. More burdensome health care reform law provisions should soon come into sharper focus for home care providers. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services should issue the 2011 proposed rule for the home health prospective payment system update very soon, CMS's Lori Anderson said in the July 7 Open Door Forum for home care providers. The rule will contain a number of provisions for HHAs drawn from the health care reform bill, including the requirement for the ordering physician to have a face-to-face encounter with the patient before certifications and recertifications. Hospices too: The law's hospice face-toface requirement also will be included in the HHA rule, Anderson said. "We encourage the hospice industry to look to the home health proposed rule for the implementation plan for that ... hospice provision which requires a face-to-face encounter." Other issues addressed in the forum include: [...]