After 28 years serving home health care providers with software systems for startups and multi-office corporations, Jeff Lewis has sold his company, Lewis, Inc., to Ozark, Missouri-based HealthcareFirst. In an exclusive HCTR interview, Lewis and HealthcareFirst CEO Bobby Robertson describe their plans for the combined company.
After more than 40 years providing software systems to home health care organizations, the Altoona, Pennsylvania-based technology company has introduced a subscription software system for hospice houses.
Hospitals are desperate for your help. In less than two years, Medicare will begin to penalize hospitals that do not bring their patient readmission rates under control. Fines will start at 1% of a hospital’s annual Medicare payments in 2012 and rise another percentage point every year until readmissions decline. Hence, hospital administrators will be open to any and all suggestions. Home health care providers are in a key position to help. This report on a presentation delivered last week at the Southwest Regional Home Care Conference by a representative of the Medicare QIO for Louisiana presents concrete steps home care providers can take to increase referrals and revenue by offering to help hospitals with their dilemma.
Even before President Obama’s promise to hire bounty hunters to eliminate waste and fraud from Medicare, Regional Home Health Intermediaries had been stepping up their rate of payment denials. Most often, justifications to withhold payments for already provided nursing or therapy services center around “lack of medical necessity.” In case after case, attorneys and appeals consultants […]
Dear Ms. Smith, After our long relationship as consultant and client, please know that I care for you and Mr. Smith and your business. Otherwise, I would not have gone through this much effort to draw your attention to a situation that I consider critical to your agency’s survival. I would ask that you examine […]
In our previous story, we reprinted a letter from a payment denials and appeals consultant who told a client he would stop representing their appeals until they improved their staff’s clinical documentation skills. At the end of the letter, he offered some examples of what kind of documentation they were giving him when he argued […]
President Barack Obama will nominate Donald Berwick, M.D., president and CEO at Boston’s Institute for Healthcare Improvement, as his new CMS administrator. Charlene Frizzera, COO of CMS and acting administrator since January 2009, will remain COO once Berwick is approved.
When HCTR editor Tim Rowan travels to Albuquerque next month to address the 4-state Southwest Regional Home Care Conference about home care technology, he will make the five-hour drive from Colorado Springs instead of flying. Ask him why and he answers without hesitation, “Two-hour advance arrival times, TSA security lines, airport parking fees, cramped seats, […]
In a surprise announcement Monday, telephony vendor Sandata LLC (formerly Sandata Technologies Inc.) announced that it has agreed to acquire the home healthcare assets of Health Systems Solutions, Inc., the New York- and Florida-based software company that provides products such as VividNet, The Analyzer and benchmarking services from the former HQS.
—The Hospice of Baton Rouge has been meeting end-of-life care needs in its community since 1984. When it wanted to get payroll, mileage and paperwork under control, it turned to CellTrak. — Fastrack Healthcare Systems, Inc. found that its customers were having a hard time deciding between hosted and installed software configurations. The HME, Home […]
