Physicians, Nurses and Allied Health Professionals Open Door Forum Update

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
Special Open Door Forum:

Home Health Electronic Clinical Template and Home Health Paper Clinical Template

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

1:00-2:00 pm Eastern Time

Conference Call Only

To assist physicians/practitioners in thoroughly documenting patient eligibility for the Medicare home health benefit, CMS is considering the development of a voluntary home health paperclinical template. A voluntary home health electronic clinical template has been in the development process for the past year. CMS believes the use of clinical templates may reduce burden on the physicians and practitioners who order home health services. CMS will be hosting a series of Special Open Door Forum calls to provide an opportunity for physicians/practitioners, home health agencies and/or all other interested parties to provide feedback on both a paper clinical template and the electronic clinical template for home health services. The first call is Wednesday February 11, 2015.

In fiscal year (FY) 2014, the Comprehensive Error Rate Testing (CERT) program found that more than half of the home health claims were paid improperly. One of the drivers of the home health error rate is inadequate documentation supporting the face-to-face requirement. Of the 630 CERT-reviewed claims found to be errors, 564 (89.5 percent) did not have documentation meeting the face-to-face requirement.

Additional Special Open Door Forum calls on the templates will be held on March 11^th, April 8th and May 6^th 2015 all at 1 PM Eastern Time.

Here is the link to our event page where the slides will be posted:  https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Monitoring-Programs/Medicare-FFS-Compliance-Programs/Medical-Review/Home_Health_Medical_Review_Update.html

Feedback and questions on the templates can be sent to: HomeHealthTemplate@cms.hhs.gov

We look forward to your participation.

           

Special Open Door Participation Instructions:

Participant Dial-In Number: 1-866-501-5502

Conference ID #: 76792263

Note: TTY Communications Relay Services are available for the Hearing Impaired. For TTY services dial 7-1-1 or 1-800-855-2880. A Relay Communications Assistant will help.

A transcript and audio recording of this Special ODF will be posted to the Special Open Door Forum website at http://www.cms.gov/OpenDoorForums/05_ODF_SpecialODF.asp for downloading.

                       

For automatic emails of Open Door Forum schedule updates (E-Mailing list subscriptions) and to view Frequently Asked Questions please visit our website at http://www.cms.gov/opendoorforums/ .

Thank you for your interest in CMS Open Door Forums.