Home Health & Hospice Week

Send therapists out early in these cases. The face-to-face encounter requirement isn't the only new mandate that hit home health agencies April 1. Medicare's new therapy reassessment requirements also took effect on that date. Under the requirement, therapists -- rather than therapy assistants -- must conduct functional reassessment visits on the 13th and 19th visits or every 30 days. CMS also now requires more specifics in therapists' documentation (see Eli's HCW, Vol. XX, No. 6, p. 42) Many HHA managers attending the National Association for Home Care & Hospice's March on Washington conference expressed concern about getting the timing right for the reassessment visits. Having multiple therapy disciplines involved in a case may make counting visits for reassessment visits harder, since HHAs must use the sum total of all therapy visits to determine reassessment timepoints. But one aspect of such cases is also easier -- CMS allows therapists to make the visits in [...]