POSTED ON MONDAY, June 15, 2020
With COVID-19, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have lifted restrictions in the home health and hospice communities to allow agencies to better care for patients without compromising patient or healthcare worker safety.
If your agency is in a state currently under Target Probe and Educate or Review Choice Demonstration, then you may have relaxed your standard documentation requirements after the suspension of both programs. It is important to remember that even though they are on hold until the public health emergency PHE ends, your clinicians should continue obtaining all required documents from physicians, completing the comprehensive assessment and/or OASIS assessment, and ensuring their narrative clinical notes contain all elements needed to meet compliance (e.g. home bound, skilled need, medical necessity, reason for visit, education provided, discharge planning, and so much more).
Maintain a steady pace even during this public health emergency so that teams remain vigilant and do not become lackadaisical when it comes to clinical documentation.
Under the PHE, non-physician practitioners can now sign home health orders and face to face documents. Before accepting these documents, verify that NPPs can perform the activities under state law and that they are enrolled in PECOS.
Even though you now have more time to complete the comprehensive assessment and/or OASIS in hospice and home health, it is recommended that you maintain a steady course and continue to complete as much as possible within the correct time frame. This will help your clinicians easily revert to normal practices once CMS lifts the temporary appeasements. Along those same lines, even though publicly reported measures for home health and hospice will remain on hold for quarter 2, completing all comprehensive assessments and/or OASIS assessments fully and accurately remains a requirement.
It is important that all home health and hospice agencies are able to maintain HIPAA compliance while still caring for their patients during this unprecedented time.
Maintain a steady pace even during this public health emergency so that teams remain vigilant and do not become lackadaisical when it comes to clinical documentation. The lifted restrictions may be wonderful today, but if it takes clinicians six months to return to normal, your agency will end up behind the eight ball. Home health visits are temporarily being provided through telehealth or texting services during PHE but remember that all contact is required to be through a secure and compliant platform. This could include Skype, Apple FaceTime, Facebook Messenger with video chat, What’s app, and more.
What is not allowed are apps such as TikTok, FB Life, or Twitch, according to the Health Resources & Services Administration Website. It is important that all home health and hospice agencies are able to maintain HIPAA compliance while still caring for their patients during this unprecedented time.
Corridor’s Clinical Documentation Advisory (CDA) Team of industry experts is standing by and can assist your agency by performing focused audits directly related to the lifted restrictions to help ensure all requirements are still being met and/or identify opportunities for your clinicians and home health or hospice teams to ensure each chart meets compliance and billing requirements.
About Corridor
Corridor is the nation’s preferred partner and trusted business advisor to home health and hospice providers, providing quality services and impactful results for 30 years. Focusing on key operational, regulatory and financial challenges, Corridor delivering industry-unique solutions and deep expertise in coding, clinical documentation review, compliance, billing and collections , consulting and provider staff education . At Corridor, we make the business of caring for people Better! For the most important industry updates and news that impacts home health and hospice, please make sure to sign up for our weekly newsletter to receive the latest up-to-date industry information direct to your inbox!
For additional information, please contact Corridor at 1-866-263-3795.
