NewsLine - February 2011 - (Page 16)

s the new year unfolds, what are some of the pressing issues that face our field and how best can hospice organizations prepare for them? NewsLine posed a series of questions to three members of NHPCO’s leadership team to explore these broad concerns— Jonathan Keyserling, JD, senior vice president, Office of Health Policy; Judi Lund Person, MPH, vice president of compliance and regulatory leadership; and Carol Spence, PhD, director of research and quality. What follows is their collective feedback to help members prioritize their organizational goals for the new year. Will the new hospice face-toface encounter rule mean a reduction in the number of new freestanding, hospices? The new rule does mean that providers will be incurring new expenses for their face-to-face encounters with longer-stay patients and, per the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services A 2011 Predictions for the Hospice Industry What Lies Ahead? management services. The data should be gathered in one place, whether or not CMS requires it. Providers should also have a system for analyzing the costs of care; that is, breaking down the data in a variety of ways to understand costs and make decisions about how to conserve resources without sacrificing the quality of care. Analyzing such things as the cost of each discipline (e.g., by pharmacy, DME, outpatient therapies, transport) by “day of care” and by “payor” should be done by each provider on a regular basis, not just in figuring the hospice cost report. In NHPCO’s work with providers to gather more data in preparation for hospice payment reform, the single most significant issue is the lack of comparable data among providers on the set of services hospices provide. So collecting such data is critically important to each hospice as well as to the field as a whole. (CMS), the cost of providing the encounters is not considered “administrative” and cannot be billed as a physician visit (unless other symptom management issues are also addressed). A provider who wishes to start a hospice, or to add hospice as a new service line, will also find it increasingly difficult to obtain initial certification. What steps will hospices have to take to prepare for hospice payment reform? In preparation for hospice payment reform, hospices should be vigilant about collecting data on their services—not just visits, but also phone calls, team time, and consultations with other community services and care 16 NewsLine

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NewsLine - February 2011

NewsLine - February 2011
Documenting Hospice Physician Services
A Message from Don
Physician Service Codes Reference Sheet
2011 MLC (display ad)
A Recap of the Face-to-Face Encounter
2011 Hospice Predictions
National Social Work Month Gift Ideas (display ad)
The Voice of NCHPP: The Experience Model
CEO Executive Mentoring Project
Hospice Executive Scholarship Program (display ad)
Recruiting Problems? HMR (display ad)
Now Online: Winter Insights
Members in the News
Upcoming Educational Offerings
New NHDD Website!
FHSSA Newsletter

NewsLine - February 2011