The Empower Care Act (Ensuring Medicaid Provides Opportunities for Widespread Equity, Resources, and Care) was re-introduced to the senate early in 2019. This bill is intended to expand as well as renew/reauthorize funding and participation in the transitioning of Medicaid beneficiaries from hospital or institutional settings to home and community-based services under the Money Follows […]
New Home Health Agency PEPPER Available The Q4CY18 release of the Home Health Agency (HHA) Program for Evaluating Payment Patterns Electronic Report (PEPPER) with statistics through December 2018 is now available for download through the PEPPER Resources Portal. To obtain your agency’s PEPPER, the Chief Executive Officer, President, Administrator or Compliance Officer should: Review the […]
Each quarter, the Fiscal Intermediary Shared System (FISS) is updated to include new logic for claims processing, pricing, etc. When the release is installed, Palmetto GBA places a temporary “hold” to ensure the release is installed properly. During this time, claims with dates on service of July 1, 2019, or later will be held in […]
Payment models have undergone numerous and frustrating changes over the past few years, and the implementation of the value-based reimbursement model is no exception. Physicians submitting claims to Medicare have likely experienced the changes relating to this payment model. Value-based reimbursements are/were intended to compensate providers based on performance and guidelines focused on improving patient […]
Over recent years the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has sought to streamline hospice beneficiary eligibility inquiries and establish the HIPAA Eligibility Transaction System (HETS) as the single source for this data. This effort was delayed due in part to the availability of insufficient information in the HETS system regarding hospice benefit period […]
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has released a second set of revisions to Chapter 10 of the Medicare Claims Processing Manual providing instructions to home health agencies for claims submission under PDGM. CMS Transmittal 4294/Change Request (CR) 11272, Home Health (HH) Patient-Driven Groupings Model (PDGM) – Additional Manual Instructions, provides some clarity […]
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has approved the Home Health Change of Care (HHCCN) Form, CMS-10280. Effective July 1, 2019, all Home Health Agencies (HHA) will be required to use the renewed form with the expiration date of 4/30/2022 on the bottom. Please note that HHAs may continue to use the old form […]
From October 1, 2018, through April 22, 2019, the home health ordering/referring/attending physician reason code 32072 was not editing correctly. This allowed claims containing a terminated attending physician to incorrectly pay. These claims should have denied. In the beginning of May, a Fiscal Intermediary Shared System (FISS) utility was initiated to adjust claims that should […]
Treating patients is your job. So too is getting paid. Unless you belong to a large medical group, chances are that your staff is taking care of billing for you. Small practices are especially at risk of delayed payments for a variety of reasons. Approximately 83% of physician practices with fewer than five practitioner states […]
A bipartisan group of legislators introduced a bill in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, April 9, to allow non-physician practitioners to certify home health orders under Medicare. Commonly referred to as the “NPP bill”, the legislation would extend certification authority to nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurse midwives, and clinical nurse specialists. These NPPs play […]
