Home Health & Hospice Week

Electronic submission a must, industry rep tells top CMS official.

Your NOE deadline headaches may ease a bit as CMS takes a look at the problem.

At the National Association for Home Care & Hospice’s March on Washington conference, NAHC’s Theresa Forster asked Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Deputy Administrator and Director of the Center for Medicare Sean Cavanaugh about the issue.

The problem: Medicare systems require hospices to enter the Notice of Election and Notice of Termination/Revocation data into the Direct Data Entry system, Foster noted in the April 4 session. (Reminder: As of October 2014, CMS requires hospices to file the NOE within five days of election.)

Hospices have had to add staff to doubleand triple-check their data entry to make sure their NOEs aren’t kicked out for typos or other errors, Foster explained. When Medicare deems an NOE late, payment for the episode can only begin on the date a valid NOE is filed.

The solution: Hospices want electronic NOE and NOTR submission to cut down on the delays, Forster said.

“On both sides, the technology isn’t where it needs to be,” Cavanaugh admitted.

Stay tuned: Forster was hopeful that CMS would move forward with an electronic submission resolution, she said in a separate session at the conference.