Home Health & Hospice Week

Ambulance transport is hospices' responsibility, CMS clarifies. You can defray at least some of the cost of the new hospice face to face encounters, if you know the ropes. In response to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services proposing hospice FFEs in July, hospices submitted strident comments decrying the financial toll the encounter requirement will  take. Good news: CMS didn't scrap the legislatively mandated FFE requirement, but it did clarify that when a hospice physician makes a visit to complete the FFE and performs additional medically  necessary services, the hospice may bill for them. "We believe that allowing for this type of billing will not only increase the quality of patient care, but also will help defray the costs to hospices of meeting this requirement," CMS says in the rule. For example: "If a physician or nurse practitioner provides reasonable and necessary non-administrative patient care such as symptom management [...]