The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will finally begin implementing its long-heralded fingerprint-based background checks for home health providers. As part of enhanced enrollment screening provisions contained in the Affordable Care Act, CMS announced it is beginning to phase in the implementation of fingerprinting background checks—an initiative three years in the making. The […]
Category: CMS
Federal investigators have uncovered some flaws with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) face-to-face rule—flaws costing $2 billion worth of erroneous home health Medicare claims, a recent report finds. Documentation standards for face-to-face encounters did not meet Medicare requirements for 32% of home health claims, resulting in $2 billion that should not have […]
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) generally operated within the guidelines and Federal requirements for the competitive bidding Round 1 rebid program for durable medical equipment suppliers, the Department of Health & Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General found in a recent report. “We determined that CMS generally selected DMEPOS (durable medical equipment, […]
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will begin a new data collection to inform hospice quality reporting, according to a Federal Register notice published this week. In accordance with the Privacy Act of 1974, CMS is establishing a new system, the Hospice Item Set System, to support the collection of data required for the […]
A Detroit-area doctor this week pleaded guilty for her role in a home health fraud scheme that bilked Medicare out of more than $7 million. The doctor, Adelina Herrero of Ann Arbor, Michigan, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud. From April 2010 to April 2013, Herraro and others agreed […]
This week, Congress passed what’s known as a “doc fix” bill, delaying not only cuts to Medicare physician payments, but also pushes back the implementation of ICD-10 coding system for one year. The temporary “fix” delays a 24% reduction in Medicare physician reimbursement until October 2015, which initially would have taken effect March 31 as […]
A home care industry trade group is exploring the possibility of filing suit against the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services if it goes forward with implementing home health care face-to-face requirements under a health care reform provision. The National Association for Home Care & Hospice argues that more guidance and clarity is needed from […]
Proposed cuts to Medicare funding for home healthcare are endangering one of the few solutions the United States has in caring for seniors, writes former Congressional Budget Office director and American Action Forum President Douglas Holtz-Eakin in a The Hill column this week. While policy makers have taken a step in the right direction by reversing […]
As many as 30 Medicare-certified home health agencies will test a care model that provides palliative support services in their routine home care offerings, in accordance with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced on March 18, 2014, the launch of the “concurrent care” demonstration under […]
The number of home health job losses escalated in February as the industry posted the largest monthly decline within the healthcare sector, according to recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). February saw 3,800 home health jobs lost during the month, the BLS data notes—a slight increase from December 2013, when the sector […]
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