Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

Surveyors get more tools. If your home health agency isn't carefully policing compliance deficiencies you could be socked with an array of newly proposed alternative sanctions or even termination. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services sets out a whole new array of "alternative sanctions" that surveyors can use before they get to Medicare termination, according to CMS's 2013 home health prospective payment system proposed rule published in the July 13 Federal Register. The new sanctions range from Civil Monetary Penalties (CMPs) to mandatory in-service training. The sanctions aim to provide "incentives for HHAs to achieve and maintain full compliance with the requirements ... before termination becomes necessary," CMS says in the rule. If finalized, the alternative sanctions will result in "an enormous change" in how home health agencies deal with issues of noncompliance, predicts Washington, D.C.-based health care attorney Elizabeth Hogue. "Surveyors will have all kinds of tools they [...]