CMS keeps changing the PECOS deadline. Will your July claims be denied or not? Uncertainty is frustrating. Home care agencies and their referring physicians just want CMS to get the online application system working and make up their mind about when they will enforce it. One by one, we are hearing about software vendors coming to the rescue. This story about one of them, ContinuLink, includes a comprehensive history of PECOS’s fluid deadlines.
Has your agency or hospice already deployed or are they seriously considering an electronic point-of-care system? In this environment, the tools you use now to manage office PCs will not keep up. It is time to learn from the big boys. What do large corporate IT departments do to track and keep safe a fleet of mobile computers? It does not have to be expensive.
The Center for Technology and Aging will fund innovative care transition projects for older adults and persons with disabilities. Grants are designed to expand use of technologies that promote better patient transitions from hospitals, rehabilitation centers or nursing facilities back to homes or other community settings. We provide a complete list of web links to grant application instructions.
Amidst all the news this month about PPS rate cuts, do not forget your regular opportunity to hear directly from CMS. Here is the phone number and code for their August 25 Open Door Forum.
We also reprint verbatim CMS’s July 16 announcement of and rationale for its proposed 4.75% Home Health PPS rate reduction. If you have your own copy of the announcement and noticed that the link to the July 23 Federal Register is incorrect, check the end of this article for the correct one.
Included as well is the pertinent excerpt from the FR describing instructions for delivering your comments to CMS.
— Allscripts to help Central Virginia system share patient data with hospital, physicians and home care
— ATA calls for presentation proposals for 2011 meeting
Though the deadline has been pushed back a few months, RHHIs will soon deny payment for home health care claims if the physician authorizing Medicare services was not registered in the Medicare Provider Enrollment, Chain and Ownership System ( PECOS) or opted out of Medicare by the date services began. Wouldn’t it be handy if your referral intake software included a direct link to the PECOS database? We have found two such services so far.
At the top of three regulatory stories this week is one that appeared on the news wires just before this issue went to press. The Federal H.E.A.T. strike force, a joint effort of HHS, the FBI, the federal Department of Justice and the DEA, arrested 94 people so far in Miami, Baton Rouge, Detroit and Brooklyn. The number is expected to grow as more arrests are announced throughout the weekend.
In a related announcement, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that health care fraud fighters in the state of Florida will now have additional funding to help find potential fraud and abuse in the state’s Medicaid program through use of Medicaid claims data.
Proper therapy utilization in home care has been in the news lately. Moving quickly, software vendor Delta Health Technologies has signed up to sponsor another Fazzi Associates research project designed to develop guidance for home health agencies on excellence in therapy services.
Combining high-tech monitoring systems with human interactions yielded psychological as well as physical benefits to cancer patients prone to experiencing pain and depression, according to a new study reported in the July 14 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
