Tag Archives: Regulations

Home health management, Regulations

As OIG looks at improper payments, agencies should look at coders


Here’s why  it’s important to know who is REALLY handling your coding and billing

It may be time to take a harder look at your agency’s coding and billing practices to determine whether you’re at unnecessary risk of being charged with fraud  — particularly in light of this summer’s announcement that the U.S. Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG) will launch a new probe to identify improper payment patterns.

The OIG will use data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services CERT Program (Comprehensive Error Rate Testing) to look for agencies with improper payments, honing in on any identifiable patterns to compile a list of common characteristics among agencies CMS believes were improperly paid.

Last year, CERT identified some $7 billion in improper payments among home health claims.

“This new initiative by the OIG sends a strong message to the home health industry,” said J’non Griffin, owner and president of Home Health Solutions LLC. “The period of hesitancy during the administration changeover earlier this year is ending, and we’re getting back to business as usual, with continuing scrutiny on home health for evidence of fraud or wrongdoing.”

How can agencies mitigate their risks for fraud or non-compliance?

Outsourcing services to a competent and professional firm is one of the best ways in which an agency can continue to focus on delivering quality health care instead of struggling to meet the compliance burden – but J’non cautions that outsourcing may have its own risks.

Agencies which rely on outsourcing for coding and billing should protect themselves by being especially  diligent not just in vetting the reputation and credentials of the firms contracted to provide services, but in ascertaining the credentials of the employees who actually perform the outsourced work for the company, J’non said.

Questions which agencies should be asking as they seek reputable outsourcing firms include:

How many of the reviewers are clinicians?

Are employees experienced in the home health and hospice fields? How many years of experience do they have?

Are they credentialed in home health and hospice specific coding?

Are the reviewers located in this country or abroad?

Are they HIPAA trained?

Are they familiar with the U.S. Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General focus on suspected fraud? Do they understand the importance of compliance to your agency’s success?

Are they knowledgeable about CMS requirements and otherwise well prepared to protect your agency?

“These are important questions for agencies to ask – more important in the long run than pricing,” J’non said. “Agencies can’t afford the cost of shoddy work quality in such heavily scrutinized circumstances.”

The HHS Who’s Coding You Challenge

Home Health Solutions LLC has announced an industry-wide “Who’s Coding You?” challenge in an effort to take the anonymity out of the outsourcing business and reassure home health agencies about the credentials and knowledgeability of our staff.

Over the next few months, we’ll be spotlighting the names, faces and credentials of all our team members to introduce to the world the people who make up our company.

“We’re proud of the HHS team and confident in the commitment to quality our team members show every day,” J’non said. “Instead of hiding our best and important assets behind the company name, we want to show them off, creating the opportunity for agencies to get to know each one of them, and learn firsthand how committed they are to doing the right thing for the agencies we serve.”

Other OIG concerns

Other areas of concern for agencies included on  the July work plan posted by the OIG include plans to evaluate Medicare Part A payments to home health agencies to determine whether claims billed to Medicare Part B for services and items were permissible and in accord with federal regulations. Certain supplies, items and services provided to inpatients are covered under Part A and should not be separately billable to Part B.

According to Section 1842 (b)(6)(F) of the Social Security Act, consolidated billing for all home health services is required while the beneficiary is under a home health plan of care authorized by a physician. The Act established a Medicare prospective payment system that pays home health agencies (HHA) for home services and covers all of their costs for furnishing services to Medicare beneficiaries. Pursuant to the home health consolidated billing requirements, the HHA that establishes a beneficiary’s home health plan of care has Medicare billing responsibility for services furnished to the beneficiary. Payment is made to the HHA whether or not the item or service was furnished by the HHA or by others by arrangement.

The OIG will review Medicare Part A payments to HHAs to determine whether claims billed to Medicare Part B for items and services were allowable and in accord with Federal regulations.

The OIG work plan also announced that it will review Medicare claims paid for telehealth services provided at distant sites that do not have corresponding claims from originating sites to determine whether those services met Medicare requirements.

Here is a link to review the OIG work plan.

Documentation

Think like an auditor

imageSeven times on a single day last week, Home Health Solutions Director of Appeals and Special Projects Heather Calhoun opened a case file and looked for proof of medical necessity.
Six of those seven times, she couldn’t find the proof she needed anywhere in the file before her.
“This is without question the No. 1 mistake I see agencies making in their day-to-day documentation, and the ramifications are enormous,” Heather says. “Without evidence that it’s needed, any care provided to a patient is not considered medically necessary and the agency may not be reimbursed for it.”
As home health agencies scramble to shore up the quality of their documentation practices under this month’s new wave of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services regulations, Heather and other HHS team leaders are working with agencies across the country.
Their goal is to teach home health care professionals how to think more like auditors — a skill that could be worth many thousands of dollars to an agency’s operational costs by preventing claims denials of specific services, visits or entire home health episodes of treatment.
“Documentation is an integral piece of the regulatory compliance required for agencies to succeed in today’s home health market,” HHS Owner J’non Griffin says. “We are working with agencies of all sizes to help them develop quality initiatives for meeting their regulatory burden.”

What auditors look for

To stand up to scrutiny, an agency’s documentation must be thorough. It will need to establish cause and intent for each aspect of care. That means agencies must record their delivery of patient care in clear and brief detail, beginning with the initial referral by a physician.
It isn’t enough just to note each pill, each dressing and each service provided to the patient; documentation must also show a comprehensive care plan coordinated among caregivers, with care goals specific to the patient.
But many agencies aren’t meeting all those requirements. Staffs busy with the delivery of patient care can get distracted from properly completing files — and HHS team members find that some of the same errors, omissions and inconsistencies show up routinely in the records of agencies of all sizes.

“Proper documentation is imperative for agencies,”  HHS Quality Assurance Manager Holly Kolitz says.  Even with time constraints and many competing demands,  agencies will need self-policing to  avoid costly errors and make sure documentation makes the grade.

 

Red Flag Checklist

     The HHS team has compiled the following checklist of some of the most common red flags almost guaranteed to catch the attention of auditors:
INCOMPLETE DOCUMENTATION:
— Missing physician orders
(Agencies need physician orders for each service, medication and treatment, including each change made to a patient’s medicine or treatment.)
— No evidence face-to-face physician requirement met
— No evidence of coordination of services
— No evidence of routine re-evaluation of patient care needs
— No explanation included for missed visits
— No documentation showing the physician was notified of a missed visit and why
ERRORS
– Careless mistakes due to lack of adequate proofreading 
INCONSISTENCIES: 
– OASIS, clinical notes, progress summaries, etc. fail to align, or in some cases even directly contradict each other.
— Clinicians provide conflicting information in their reports

“If a wound starts out being identified as one type of wound at the beginning of treatment, but is repeatedly identified in later documents as a different type of wound, auditors are certainly going to notice,” Holly says. “The legitimate question to be raised is whether we even know what kind of wound we’re dealing with.”
Agencies must provide documentation showing the initial diagnosis was changed or maintain uniformity throughout the treatment records, cross-checking to make certain later records support the wound identification in OASIS.
One of the most common mistakes Heather sees agencies make involves discrepancies in reporting between nurses and therapists.  A nurse, for example, may provide a highly functional score for a patient, because the nurse isn’t necessarily evaluating the same criteria as a  therapist. When a therapist evaluates the quality of the same patient’s gait,  stride or ease of transition from chair to walker, and reports lower functionality, the resulting discrepancy can become a red flag.

“Sometimes, it’s the simple mistakes that bog things down,” Holly adds. “Agencies can sometimes miss the obvious in recording details, and the results can create real issues.”
From copying a medical code wrong to identifying the wrong site for an injection or mistakenly substituting “right” for “left” on a record of a limb amputation, careless errors can sometimes cost an agency thousands of dollars.
The HHS team strongly recommends self-evaluation  in agencies, with frequent reviews of all documentation for accuracy.

One other area likely to generate red flags in an agency’s documentation is a lack of specificity. Tomorrow’s post will focus on strategies to better capture the important details needed for quality documentation.

Wednesday: The Mechanics Of Specificity 

Did you see our companion post on the four elements of quality documentation?  Read it here