Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

With so many changes coming down the pike in data collection and reporting, per the new Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation Act of 2014 (IMPACT), PAC facilities could either sink or swim. Experts highly advise that if you don’t already have good electronic health record software, now’s the time to find it. For more details on the IMPACT Act, see the previous article.

 

“A lot of the transitions should be done seamlessly through a good EHR tool,” says Charles Crecelius, MD, PhD, CMD, private practice owner in St. Louis and chair of the Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine’s (AMDA) public policy committee. “I don’t think we’re going to have to check that many more boxes — what it’ll hopefully do is utilize the information I have.”

 

Unfortunately, many nursing facilities and home health agencies are notorious for still being paper-based. Also, “there are very few people and organizations in long-term care who have really good EHR to communicate well with pharmacy, hospitals, private doctors, and the primary care provider,” Crecelius says. 

 

Worth it: “When you’re talking about sending and receiving discharge summaries and other things, having an interoperable system that can communicate the record that’s required by this [law] could certainly decrease all kinds of administrative complexity,” says Alex Bardakh, MPP, PLC, director of public policy for AMDA.

 

Software vendors haven’t catered as well to long-term care as other settings, but you can expect that to change with the demand that will soon be around the corner. Begin exploring different vendor options, and if they don’t have a system that’s designed for your setting, request it. Many EHR software vendors will see the IMPACT Act as a big opportunity for new revenue.