Tag: Face-to-Face

HCA Revamps Physician Face-to-Face Guidance

The Home Care Alliance has newly revamped documents available for helping home health agencies work with physicians relative to the face-to-face encounter requirement.

Please feel free to utilize and distribute the documents below, which include a fact sheet on the requirement, a sample documentation guide, and a tip sheet for terms that can be used in the “brief narrative” portion of the document.

The Home Care Alliance continues to work with association partners such as the Massachusetts Medical Society, Massachusetts Hospital Association, Mass Senior Care, LeadingAge Massachusetts and others to ensure that physicians in every setting know about and properly cooperate with the requirement.

Return to www.thinkhomecare.org.

Physician Face-to-Face Encounter Update: New Q&As

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have posted new guidance regarding the physician face-to-face requirement in order for patients to receive Medicare home health services.

Questions & Answers have been updated periodically by CMS and a new round has just been made available.

The new Q&A’s include:

Also, if you are from a home health agency and have not already done so, please comment on a national Face-to-Face Encounter Requirement Survey. Your feedback on whether the report reflects the issues your agency is facing will be instrumental in the Home Care Alliance’s advocacy and meetings with federal elected officials taking place at the end of March. You can comment on this newsfeed post or email James Fuccione at HCA.

Return to www.thinkhomecare.org.

Physician Face-to-Face Encounter National Survey: Please Comment

The Home Care Alliance will be traveling to Washington DC later this month to advocate on many issues of concern, including the physician face-to-face encounter requirement set to be enforced starting April 1.

Please see this summary of results from a nationwide survey and let the Alliance know if your agency is in line with how other home health providers from across the country answered.

The survey was conducted by the National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC) and is important in helping HCA shape the message that will be delivered to our Congressional delegation and other key government officials.

Return to www.thinkhomecare.org.

CMS Clarifies use of HHABN for Face-to-Face Requirement

On the CMS Home Health, Hospice & DME Open Door Forum held today, March 2nd.,  staff from CMS discussed the use of the HHABN when discharging a patient because there was no F2F encounter within the required time frame.  This is a clarification of an earlier policy which said that the HHABN was not to be used in this situation.

Option BOX 2 can be used because the agency is ending services for administrative reasons such as lack of a F2F encounter.  It is a change of care notice only and there is no beneficiary liability for the care provided. Further written clarification from CMS will be forthcoming.

Physician Face to Face Encounter Update

The Home Care Alliance wrote an article in the Massachusetts Medical Society’s newsletter in an effort to further educate physicians on the CMS face-to-face encounter requirement. The article was written at the beginning of the year and published in the February edition of “Vital Signs,” the MMS newsletter, although much has happened since then.

With one month left until the April 1st enforcement deadline, the Alliance continues to provide updates as they become available. To that end, some new important Q&A’s have been posted on the CMS website, which are available here.

A few of the new Q&A’s are listed below:

Return to www.thinkhomecare.org.

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