Prepare Yourself With Hospice Updates 2014

For the 2014 FY, CMS feels that hospice payments will increase by 1.1%. But Hospices that could not report quality measures that were mandatory under the HQRP at the beginning of this year will have 2% reduction in the market basket values.

From July 1 this year, claims were returned for hospices that tried to submit claims multiple times per hospice beneficiary in a given month. Although, this was a basic requirement that has not yet been reinforced, going forward it will get reinforced.

Also among the new hospice updates 2014 at AudioEducator, the OIG along with the Department of Justice are closely scrutinizing hospices with increased length of stay at a GIP level of care. Also, if GIP is in use in any inpatient unit of any hospice, it is more likely to draw intense attention from CMS.

This coupled with other factors have led CMS to conclude a part of the proposed rule for FY 2014 the specific payment rates for hospice in four payment categories. As before, the level of care will be of primary importance and a main point for scrutiny by CMS which filed a civil suit against an established provider for submission of false claims to Medicare citing unnecessary services that were not provided or performed in keeping with Medicare norms. These required specific documentation that were not done accordingly.

GIP services will be subject to close scrutiny so one needs to be aware. Hospice Item Set draft version of assessment forms has been recently released by CMS to be completed for patients before or after July1 next year. For data submission requirements in FY 2016, CMS has proposed that hospices gather data by using the data collection instrument HIS that has been recently created. It has been designed to gather standardized, pain level data for five domains of care: Pain, Respiratory Status, Medications, Patient Preferences, and beliefs and values.

CMS and the public will view QRP data of hospice that will be available on website of CMS and hospice.

Data will be submitted by hospice with the help of QIES and ASAP systems which is already being used by IRFs, SNFs and LTCHs.

If you are looking for online conferences, AudioEducator is the place where you can choose a wide range of medical coding conferences on hospice updates 2014 and Home health training to prepare for the year ahead.