Long-Term Care Survey Alert

Question: Will Part B sometimes pay for rehab therapy for a patient on hospice?

Answer: "Although it is allowable to provide Part B therapy to hospice patients, I think it's very difficult to meet the Medicare regulatory requirements outside the hospice benefit," says Roshunda Drummond-Dye, JD, associate director of payment policy for the American Physical Therapy Association. "It's totally permissible under the hospice benefit to provide therapy for quality of life. Medicare mandates it under the hospice benefit."

Consultant Beth Carpenter says "it's increasingly become hard for medical reviewers who review charts to believe everything isn't related to the hospice diagnosis. For example, if the person has cancer metastasis and breaks a bone, the medical reviewer will say the fracture is related to the medication the person is receiving or the hospice diagnosis," adds Carpenter, with Beth Carpenter and Associates in Lake Barrington, Ill.