News from Home Care
News from Home Care
DME suppliers warned of potential violations
The Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released an 80-page compliance plan for durable medical equipment suppliers that carries myriad warnings regarding potential billing violations and sets up the potential problems between suppliers and providers.
The OIG compliance plan includes more than 47 specific risk areas that range from traditional OIG targets, such as telemarketing practices and certificates of medical necessity, to more recent issues such as the use of supply closets. Industry advocates, such as the Alexandria, VA-based Health Industry Distributors Association argued that the OIG plan allows assumptions and interpretations about future Medicare rules and regulations, and contain conflicts with prior Medicare rulings.
One of the areas being focused on is the use of supply closets. Suppliers maintain these closets are used as nothing more than places where a limited number of items are stored with a provider to expedite training and discharge of patients. But OIG says the practice could be a potential violation if the supplier charges more than fair market value for the space rented to store supplies.
Among other items the OIG is issuing warnings is the use of unsolicited telephone calls to Medicare beneficiaries, continuing to bill for rental items after they are no longer medically necessary, and improper conduct related to CMNs.
Associations fail to introduce home care bill
While a wave of home care bills have been introduced in Congress, industry associations are having a difficult time supporting any one proposal, instead opting to draft a proposal of their own that employs six key principles. However, the industry is finding a key congressional figure to introduce their proposal.
The National Association for Home Care, the Home Health Services and Staffing Association, the American Federation of Home Care Providers (all based in Washington, DC) the Home Care Association of America (Jacksonville, FL), and the Visiting Nurses Association of America (Boston), met in July to discuss strategy. Despite their inability to get their precise bill introduced, the five associations are encouraged by the lack of internal division that has plagued them before.
Among the major goals of the group is to eliminate the 15% across-the-board cut in reimbursement and an outlier provision for medically complex patients.
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