Hospice Insights Podcast: What’s the Latest on UPICs? Highlights from Recent Audit Activity, Part I
Hospice Insights Podcast - Stories of Successful Hospice Leadership: The CEO and Chief Medical Officer Relationship
Hospice Insights Podcast - A Rise in Medicare Deactivations: Tips for Avoiding This Financial Pain
AGG Talks: Home Health & Hospice Podcast - Episode 5: Understanding Palliative Care: Strategies for Compliance and Reimbursement
Hospice Insights: Check the Mail: Are You Getting a 4% Rate Cut?
Hospice Labor and Employment Trends - Get Up to Speed Fast: What You Need to Know About the New Rules Involving Non-Competes and Exempt Employees
AGG Talks: Home Health & Hospice - Lessons Learned From ALJ Hospice Audit Appeals
Hospice Insights Podcast - A Refresh: What’s New in the New OIG General Compliance Program Guidance
Hospice Insights Podcast - Deal Breakers: Identifying Key Issues Early in Member Substitutions
A Command Performant(s): RAC Audits on the Rise
The TPE Carousel. . . Around and Around We Go
A Fond Farewell: Musings on the End of the Medicare Advantage Hospice Carve-In Demonstration
OMG. . .The OIG is at it Again
How One Hospice Owner Got Convicted of Healthcare Fraud and How You Can Avoid That Fate
Hospice and Home Health Survey Perspectives: A Conversation with Kim Skehan, VP of Accreditation at CHAP
Year in Review: Key Regulatory Updates in 2023
An Alternative to Consolidations: Key Considerations for Management Services Organizations
Stories of Successful Hospice Leadership: The CEO and Compliance Officer Relationship
A Very “Special” Episode: Amid Controversy, CMS Launches the Hospice Special Focus Program
Grace from CMS: Unexpected Good News on HIS and CAHPS Appeals
Looking for a simple, easy-to-implement way to lower your risk of overpayments? We have one on this week’s podcast!...more
Gentiva, the renamed former Kindred at Home, agreed to pay $19.4 million to resolve claims that its predecessor company, Kindred at Home and related companies, violated the False Claims Act by retaining overpayments for...more
Until recently, deactivation of a hospice’s Medicare provider number seemed like an action reserved for egregious conduct. But with law changes and an enhanced focus on enrollment, good hospices have found themselves facing a...more
Applicable Provider Types: Hospice; Home Health Agency - Is Your Entity in Compliance? The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) finalized and expanded its so-called 36-month rule with certain changes...more
Since the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) paused much of its audit activity during the COVID Public Health Emergency, the most recent rounds of Medicare audit activity may represent the first “look” at the...more
The US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) finalized important changes to the Medicare enrollment regulations applicable to hospices and home health agencies (HHAs), including increasing the level of screening that...more
AGG’s Home Health & Hospice team publishes a quarterly newsletter covering legal and regulatory topics specific to the home and community-based healthcare industry. The fields of end-of-life and home healthcare present...more
The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”), the agency that administers the Medicare hospice benefit, has announced increased scrutiny of hospice programs in the wake of growing concerns over hospice service...more
On June 30, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the proposed rule for the Home Health Prospective Payment System for the 2024 calendar year. The proposed rule aims to permanently update the payment...more
On April 20, 2023, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) made ownership data of all Medicare-certified hospices and home health agencies publicly available for the first time. This move is consistent with the...more
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced on April 27, 2023, that it will publicly release all ownership information of home health and hospice agencies. This move is aimed at increasing transparency and...more
On April 4, 2023, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) published a proposed rule for FY 2024 addressing the Hospice Wage Index and Payment Rate Update, Hospice Conditions of Participation Updates, Hospice...more
On April 20, 2023, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the release of ownership data for all Medicare-enrolled hospice and home health agencies. This release is consistent with the Department of...more
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (“MedPAC”) will hold a public virtual meeting on December 8, 2022, to assess payment adequacy and updating payments for hospice services. By law, each year MedPAC reviews Medicare’s...more
Hear directly from the enforcement community - Want to gain insight into properly monitoring, detecting, investigating, and managing violations? Join us virtually at HCCA’s Annual Healthcare Enforcement Compliance...more
The HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) recently announced its Office of Audit Services plans to conduct a nationwide review of hospice eligibility, focusing on those Medicare hospice beneficiaries who haven't had an...more
On November 2, 2021, CMS put on display its final rule that, among other things, updates the home health and home infusion therapy services payment rates for calendar year (CY) 2022; makes significant changes to the provider...more
On December 3, 2020, MEDPAC reviewed hospice data from 2019, noting these key metrics: • Medicare payments grew just under 10% to $20.9 billion; • Hospices served 1.6 million patients, including 51% of 2019 decedents...more
What does Medicare cover? What are the costs of Medicare? What happens if you forget to enroll for Medicare? Medicare is the federal health insurance program for people in the United States who are over the age of 65 or...more
Report on Medicare Compliance 29, no. 30 (August 24, 2020) - A federal court on Aug. 17 blocked HHS from enforcing its revised definition of sex discrimination in Sec. 1557, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of...more
Discover the factors that drove healthcare M&A activity in 2019. Innovation, expansion and continued private equity investment in the industry influenced healthcare transactions last year. 2019 saw continued robust...more
On September 26, 2019, CMS issued a Final Rule that CMS intends will reform certain Medicare regulations related to standards and certifications that CMS identified as “unnecessary, obsolete, or excessively burdensome.” CMS...more
On August 6, 2019, CMS finalized its 2020 hospice rule, including adopting, without substantial modification, two controversial and material changes to the hospice benefit: Rebasing payment rates to shift about $500...more
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently issued a proposed rule — Medicare and Medicaid Programs; Regulatory Provisions To Promote Program Efficiency, Transparency, and Burden Reduction — to revise...more
A LOOK BACK... A LOOK AHEAD - While the uncertainty associated with legislative efforts to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) dominated most of the headlines for the healthcare industry last year,...more