Influenza due to identified avian influenza virus (488)

DOL is onto agencies’ tricks such as misclassifying employees and neglecting to combine hours between locations. Failing to pay overtime and minimum wage has socked two Texas home care agencies with a hefty $1 million bill. Alegre Home Health Care [...]

Watch for tobacco use correlations to urologic cancers. While there are not major HCPCS Level II changes that will alter your 2023 coding, there are some new codes you should review and some deleted codes that you should pull out [...]

General conflict of interest declaration will cover many possible scenarios. One of the more popular provisions in the hospice survey revamp regulation is the one prohibiting surveyors from surveying a hospice if they have certain conflicts of interest. And the [...]

Special Focus Program taken off fast track. The 2022 home health final rule will make a big difference to hospices this year, because it contains sweeping survey changes for the sector mandated by law. In the home health proposed rule [...]

The first reporting period is just around the corner in mid-June. On May 11, 2021, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released an interim final rule that includes a new provision: Long-Term Care (LTC) Facility Vaccine Immunization Requirements [...]

Medicare’s total outlay for 2017 spiked 6 percent. If you’re wondering why the hospice industry has been subject to heavier scrutiny, harsher regulation, stricter enforcement, and more burdens, a look at the industry’s key statistics may be the answer. The [...]

Medicare’s hospice spending surpasses home health’s. Hospices hoping to head off increased scrutiny, payment cuts, and destabilizing payment reform should take a look at the stats that decision-makers are using when considering sweeping changes. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission annual [...]

Check in to make sure your facility is employing the correct standard of care in the dining room — and earning the reimbursement your facility deserves. Feeding assistants are a crucial part of some of your residents’ daily life. Fully [...]

One ophthalmologist in our sampling would lose $39,000 a year under the new proposal. Although eye care practices have the option of reporting either ophthalmological services codes or E/M codes for their patient encounters, many ophthalmologists and optometrists bill the [...]

Getting your Medicare certification through an accrediting organization (AO) may no longer safeguard your survey results information. The problem: AOs “currently do not make their survey reports and accompanying [Plans of Correction] publicly available,” the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid [...]