A Home Health Provider Agrees To Pay $22.9 Million In False Claims Act Case

The Oklahoma City-based home health provider Carter Healthcare will pay $22.9 million in order to resolve allegations that it paid physicians to induce referrals of patients that led to false claims to the Medicare and TRICARE programs. “The taxpayer dollars that fund Medicare and Medicaid are meant to support the delivery of health care services […]

OIG: Home Health Surveyors Need More Accurate Patient Information

Home health surveyors select patients for review using lists supplied by home health agencies (HHAs), but some of the lists are missing information, a new report indicates. Of the 28 HHA-supplied rosters reviewed by the Department of Health & Human Services’ (HHS) Office of the Inspector General (OIG), nine were incomplete. Each of the incomplete rosters […]

Legislation Aims to RAISE Support for Family Caregivers

Apart from home health aides, family caregivers are instrumental to delivering care to patients in the home setting—and now, a bill advocating for the crucial role they play is making its move in Washington. Titled the Recognize, Assist, Include, Support, and Engage Family Caregivers Act of 2017—better known as the RAISE Family Caregivers Act—the bill […]

Trump Picks Alex Azar for HHS Secretary

Alex Azar, a former executive with Eli Lilly, was nominated by President Donald Trump as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Azar served as general counsel for HHS and as deputy HHS Secretary under President George W. Bush. The announcement came in the form of a tweet from Trump Monday morning. Happy […]

Another Hurricane Forces Home Health Providers to Snap into Action

Within a fortnight of the category four Hurricane Harvey that hit the Texas coastline, Hurricane Irma blasted home health care providers in Florida over the weekend. Health care providers began preparing for the worst several days ahead of the storm, as Florida Governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency and many coastal zones evacuated. Health […]

Monday Briefing: Bayada’s Bet on a Tech Company

Happy Monday, dearest Home Health Care News readers. We hope you made the most of your weekend. To kick off your week, check in with our Monday Briefing to catch up on the latest news in home health care and around the web—like this Pew study that found a whopping one-third of seniors don’t even […]

HHS Appeal to Slow Backlog Mandate Doesn’t ‘Tilt the Scales’

Despite its resistance, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) must comply with a previously announced timetable for clearing a massive Medicare appeals backlog after all, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has decided. The Medicare appeals backlog grew exponentially in recent years due, in part, to more aggressive Medicare […]

OIG: Largest Nonprofit Misallocated Millions in Hurricane Sandy Funding

Visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNSNY), the largest not-for-profit, home- and community-based health care organization in the country, may have used hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of federal disaster relief funds inappropriately, and planned to spend millions more inappropriately, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG). […]

Editor’s Picks: Philips’ Latest Aging-in-Place Tech

This week, Home Health Care News readers had their interest piqued by Philips’ latest foray into aging-in-place technology, a health system’s successful approach to improving its palliative care services, and federal lawmakers’ collective stand against home health prior authorization. Readers also were curious to learn the best ways to reduce turnover amongst home health aides. […]

Lawmakers Take Stand Against Home Health Prior Authorization

Mounting backlash against the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) proposed home health preauthorization rule is coming from a fresh source—lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. A bipartisan group of 116 lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives penned a letter to CMS Acting Administrator Andrew Slavitt and Department of Health and Human Services […]