HCA and provider association colleagues (the Health Care Association of New York State and the Medical Society of the State of New York) are co-sponsoring a free June 2 webinar, facilitated by National Government Services (NGS), outlining Medicare home health eligibility and documentation requirements.
The webinar runs from 10:30 a.m. to noon and you can register here.
Since the inception of the Medicare home health face-to-face rule, HCA has been at the forefront of efforts to seek a repeal of the requirement or, barring repeal, changes to the rule that would ease the duplicative and costly documentation mandate for home care providers
We’ve repeatedly engaged New York’s Congressional Delegation, which issued an HCA-prompted letter to the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) sharing our recommendations to change the rule. Those recommendations would allow for the requirement to be documented on the existing plan-of-care, as opposed to a separate, duplicative and onerous process insisted by CMS.
That letter was led by New York Congressional Representatives Tom Reed and Paul Tonko, garnering over 70 signatures from their House colleagues. HCA has likewise written legislation complementing the HCA fixes recommended by Congress, and we’ve worked with NGS, the state’s Medicare Administrative Contractor, on education and training programs, all the while attempting to get NGS’s support for a standardized template that would, in the very least, ease the documentation process.
As these efforts continue, state contractors are initiating “probe-and-educate” audits as well as other documentation reviews. In the audit process, Medicare’s home care medical record reviews include substantiating documentation from both the referring provider(s) and the home care agency. If such a review shows home care eligibility criteria and medical necessity are not met or supporting documentation is missing, all claims associated with that patient’s home health episode of care are at risk for denial.
These audits and medical reviews are all the more reason why it is so important for NGS to provide additional education on the precise requirements.
The June 2 webinar will feature two speakers from NGS. These speakers will provide information and guidance to hospitals, home health agencies, and all providers about the shared responsibilities for referring Medicare beneficiaries to home health services:
- Lauri Domingo, R.N., Provider Outreach and Education, Home Health Clinical Consultant; and
- Shelly Bernardini R.N., B.S.N., C.P.H.M., Lead Home Health Clinical Consultant.
Online registration for this June 2 webinar is provided by NGS. Registrants are invited to email their pre-webinar questions for speakers to HCA at pconole@hcanys.org before May 26. Please address these questions for the speakers so that we can compile them and forward them for answering by NGS.