Home Health & Hospice Week

CMS addresses therapy questions in latest Open Door Forum. Want to take a gamble on what qualifies you to use the 11-to-13 and 17-to-19 visit ranges for the newly required therapy reassessments? That's what you'll need to do unless you fit into two specific exceptions. The prospective payment system final rule for 2011 requires home health agencies to have a therapist (not an assistant) perform a reassessment visit every 30 days and on the 13th and 19th visits in an episode. When only one therapy discipline is involved in a case, "we would almost all of the time expect that [reassessment visit] to be provided ... on the thirteenth visit," Lori Anderson of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said in the April 13 Open Door Forum for home care providers. But when providers complained in response to the proposed rule that hitting those visits exactly would be very [...]