Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

Plus:  Hospitals get new quality measures to live up to.

Nearly 21 percent of doctors interviewed in 2004-2005 said they had access to information technology (IT) that allowed them to perform at least four out of five important clinical tasks, according to the Center for Studying Health System Change. That's up from just 11 percent in 2000-2001, the Houston Chronicle reports. But nearly 17 percent of doctors couldn't use IT for any of the five tasks, and 20 percent could only perform one out of five tasks using IT.

Watch For NQF's New Hospice Care Quality Measures

Hospices may have a lot to live up to if the National Quality Forum (NQF) gets its way. NQF has endorsed "a comprehensive framework for evaluating the quality of palliative and hospice care; a set of 38 preferred practices for delivering high-quality palliative and hospice care; and 9 recommendations for research to improve upon the measurement and evaluation of palliative and hospice care," says a May 18 release.

The hospice quality measures won't become consensus standards like those that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services was required to adopt for Home Health Compare last fall, NQF spokesperson Phil Dunn told Eli at the time the forum proposed the standards.

Parties can request reconsideration of the recommendations via letter by June 19, NQF says. More information is online at www.qualityforum.org/news/prPalliativeendorsed05-18-06.pdf.

HHAs Providing Rural Services Are In For A Surprise

Members of Congress are working on legislation of interest to home health agencies. Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR), chair of the House Rural Health Care Coalition, has introduced a bill (H.R. 5118) that would extend the 5 percent rural add on for home health agencies through 2011. The legislation also would provide a lump sum payment for rural services provided in the last nine months of 2005--the period after the add on expired and before the Jan. 1 reinstatement by the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, notes the American Association for Homecare.

And 177 members of Congress asked House Ways and Means Committee and House Energy and Commerce Committee leaders in a May 30 letter to extend the outpatient therapy cap exception process through 2007, according to press reports. A similar letter is circulating in the Senate, the American Physical Therapy Association says. The therapy cap applies only to Part B therapy services, not those furnished under a home health plan of care.