In a major win for home health agencies across the country, a federal district court determined that they will hear a legal challenge presented by the National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC) to the validity of the physician narrative portion of the face-to-face requirement.
According to NAHC, the court issued an order denying Medicare’s effort to have the lawsuit dismissed by the court. The face-to-face requirement (F2F) was troublesome and frustrating from the outset as CMS released no standardized form for providers to follow and provider education was insufficient at best. It took constant advocacy and education on the state and local levels and strong lobbying on the federal level from state and national home care associations and agencies to even call attention to the problem.
The physician narrative where physicians must write a detailed account of patient eligibility for home health care services proved to be the paramount concern. Although the new final rule effective 1/1/2015 removes the narrative piece of the requirement, NAHC will continue to litigate the dispute to address the past claim denials and those denials that may still come involving home health services provided prior to January 1, 2015. If the lawsuit is successful, Medicare would be required to reopen and pay any claim previously denied for an insufficient narrative and stop any further claim reviews related to the narrative requirement.
NAHC and the Home Care Alliance continue to advise home health agencies to consider appealing any narrative-related claim denials while the lawsuit is progressing. Such action will preserve the opportunity to have the claims reviewed by Administrative Law Judges and also allow for easy identification of claims that may be subject to reopening if the lawsuit is successful.
The Alliance will also continue to provide education and updates on the new rule, including an upcoming webinar in early February. The Alliance helped lead the effort on a letter from New England Senators to CMS on F2F reviews and is out front with notices to physicians and hospitals on the recent rule changes.
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