The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has launched a new tool meant to help patients and their families find hospice care that best suits their needs. Hospice Compare is a new website that displays metrics related to the quality of care that a hospice provider delivers to its patients. The site is part of the CMS […]
A final rule setting fiscal year 2018 payment rates for hospices has been determined by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). In keeping with current law, the market basket percentage increase is 1% for hospices in FY 2018. That equates to a $180 million aggregate increase in their payments in FY 2018. The […]
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) published on Friday new updates to two different hospice data sets—one on the thoughts of consumers, the other on hospice quality measures. The first data set—the Hospice Item Set (HIS)—includes the national averages for quality measure scores of Medicare-certified hospice agencies calculated from the HIS for July 1, […]
A pilot program that incentivizes the delivery of home-based health care for chronically ill patients may be extended if newly introduced legislation passes. The Senate Finance Committee Chronic Care Working Group introduced the Creating High-Quality Results and Outcomes Necessary to Improve Chronic (CHRONIC) Care Act of 2016 (S. 3504) on Dec. 6. The bipartisan legislation, among other […]
Happy November, Home Health Care News readers! It’s officially Home Care & Hospice Month, according to the National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC), and with the presidential election only days away, caregiver issues are on the national conscience. Our most-read stories this week were about the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) […]
A national, nonprofit organization that promotes, advances and supports mission-driven providers of community-based health care has revealed the specific home health and hospice legislation it will focus on and which causes it will seek to advance on Capitol Hill in the coming months. The Visiting Nurse Association of America (VNAA), based in Arlington, Virginia, outlined two […]
A pilot program that aims to expand in-home primary care for chronically ill patients continues to achieve care improvements and reduce Medicare costs. The Independence at Home demonstration saved Medicare more than $10 million this year. On average, there was $1,010 per beneficiary saved this year among 15 practices and 10,000 Medicare beneficiaries, according to […]
The start of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) pre-claim review demonstration has drawn harsh criticism from many stakeholders in the home health care industry. Now, they may be able to say that seniors themselves don’t like the initiative, either. Bring Home the Vote, which sponsored the poll, is a national initiative that […]
This week, Home Health Care News readers read up on three main topics: reimbursement, coding and fraud. The Medicare Fraud Strike Force charged about 300 people—including some in the home health industry—in a variety of schemes that involved more than $900 million in fraudulent health care billings, and the Office of the Inspector General identified […]
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) officially finalized the first major updates to ICD-10. CMS added just under 2,000 new codes, revised about 400 codes and deleted about 300 codes, according to experts who analyzed data posted to the CMS website. The agency published the official code changes and impactful revisions in tabular […]
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