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Posts from the ‘Medicare Fraud and Abuse’ Category

Jan 18

8 Comments

Your Rights as a Provider

It is not my desire to create drama but then again, I am not the one who took away your rights as a provider.

Your contract with Medicare is simple.  It states that you are qualified to perform services for home health and hospice patients and Medicare will pay you according to an agreed schedule.  Occasionally, they review clinical records and refuse to pay based on their assessment of your chart.  If you agree with their decision as is sometimes appropriate, so be it.  If you feel as though you disagree with their decision, you can appeal.

Sort of…..

Last week, I heard a rumor started by the National Association of Home Care and Hospice that the ALJ’s weren’t going to be docketing any more cases from home health and hospice providers.  I knew this could not be the case so I emailed Mr. Dombi at NAHC and he responded by sending a scanned copy of a letter from the Chief Administrative Law Judge, Nancy Griswold confirming this complete and utter lunacy.

For those of you who do not work in the world of appeals and do more important things like take care of sick people in their homes, let me explain this to you.

Imagine you did something else for a living.  Humour me and pretend that you are a roofer.  My insurance company who supplies 95 percent of your business  agreed to pay you to put a roof on my house and you did a fine job.   You shingled my home with materials that will withstand a category 5 hurricane and then you sent a bill and my insurance company politely declined to pay it.   Since the services were covered under your contract, the advance Roof Recipient Notice won’t protect you and I am held harmless while enjoying the sound of the rain on my new Cat 5 roof.

You take your complaint to the board of insurance and they tell you that you are right!  You did install at Cat 5 roof on my house but it doesn’t matter.  No payment is forthcoming.  Their reasoning is that in order to begin work, they had you sign a 30 page contract and on page 27, halfway down, it said that in order to be paid, you must initial the bottom of every page of the contract.  You only initialed 15 pages.

You decide the whole world of roofers and contractors has gone crazy and decide to take the insurance company to court.  The problem is there is no judge to hear your case.

So, I get the roof.  You get nothing and you have no rights.  The insurance company who signed a contract agreeing to pay you is sitting pretty with another satisfied customer under a Cat 5 roof and all you can do is work harder and faster to make up for the lost dollars.

That is exactly what is happening with Medicare appeals right now.  Payment is being refused for up to half of all claims at some MACs (e.g. Palmetto GBA, NGS, CGS) and you do not have any right to appeal denials past a certain point.  There is no person that you can talk to and you are completely unsure if anyone is actually looking at your records before rubber stamping  ‘denied’ on your claim. In short, they don’t give a flying flip that you had to pay your nurses or cover supplies.

When I work appeals, most of my work is done with the ALJ in mind.  If it’s good enough for them, it should satisfy the lower levels of appeals but often it does not.  The ALJ is the first human being that you can plead with to be reasonable. Except in desperate and extreme cases, the appeals process ends there.

Ms. Griswold confidently speaks to the increase in the number of denials being appealed but she does not speak at all to the increase in denials that are fully appealable or the rate of denials being overturned by Administrative Law Judges for the first two levels of appeal.   If the first two levels of appeals were performed competently, the workload at the ALJ would naturally fall as a byproduct of efficient, ethical and fair clinical reviews.

She makes a very valid point that the number of cases has increased overwhelming the ALJ’s but instead of addressing the huge percentage of denials that should have never been, she asks for ‘indulgence’.  It’s like pouring salt into a wound.

How dare Ms. Griswold ask for indulgence when almost half of the claims for home health have been denied by some MACs for grammatical errors relating to the F2F encounter documentation?   She wants to thank us in advance even though she has the responsibility to be well aware that her staff is ultimately overwhelmed due to the enormous increase in unfair denials.

I beg for your indulgence when I say that someone in Washington, starting with Ms. Griswold needs to have the courage to stand up for the good providers and quit playing political games with the healthcare needs of our elderly.

According to the HHS website, Ms. Griswold can be reached at:

OMHA Headquarters
1700 N. Moore St., Suite 1800
Arlington, VA 22209

Phone: 703-235-0635;   Fax: 703-235-0700

E-mail: Medicare.Appeals@hhs.gov

Make use of this information.  If you don’t speak up now, you may not be able to later.

Thanks to NAHC for sharing this information freely without regard to membership status. The content and sentiment in this post are mine alone and should not be attributed to NAHC or any other entity or person. 

Dec 17

5 Comments

New Kids on the Block

 

Strategic Health Solutions is a Medicare Supplemental Review Contractor.  If you haven’t heard of them yet, chances are you will.  They have been ‘encouraging’ agencies to send them clinical records with letters that read as follows:

Effective April 1, 2011 , Section 6407 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) established a face-to-face encounter requirement for certification of eligibility for Medicare Home Health services, by requiring the certifying physician to document that he or she, or a non-physician practitioner working with the physician, has seen the patient. CMS implemented the face-to-face encounter requirement of the ACA via the Home Health Prospective Payment System (HHPPS) Calendar Year rulemaking. The Final Rule states that documentation of the face-to-face encounter must be present on certifications for patients with starts of care on or after January 1, 2011 .

Office of Inspector General (OIG) work conducted, before the ACA mandate went into effect, found that only 30 percent of beneficiaries had at least one face-to-face visit with the physicians who ordered their home health care. This constitutes new and material evidence that establishes good cause for reopening as required under 42 CFR 405.980(b). Based on this information CMS has directed Strategic to perform postpayment review of Medicare Part A Claims billed for home health services.

As you well know, it is most unlike me to be argumentative but I googled ‘home health referral sources’.  As it turns out, the CDC information from 2010 is in stark contrast to the information provided by the OIG via Strategic Health Solutions.

referral sources

This graph states that providers who only offer home health services have 40 percent of their admissions from a hospital.  It says that 30 percent were from physicians but not that they were the outcome of actual physician visits so lets assume none of them were.  Sadly, the CDC’s 2010 report references 2007 data.

Lets move on to MedPac.  They write reports twice a year for the Congress about how much we are overpaid.  They increase our confusion by writing about how many episodes are preceded by a hospital stay but their data reflects 2010 so that’s a plus.  They say that 27 percent of initial episodes are preceded by a hospital stay and the average length of stay for those patients was 1.4 episodes.  That means that 38 percent of patients come from a hospital.

Neither MedPac or the CDC differentiate between patients  who were in the hospital seen by physicians who did not order their home health and those that did.  If a patient was from out of state, it might be that their personal doctor ordered home health or that a hospitalist saved that special joy for the primary physician.   This is important because it shows how accurate data could potentially be manipulated to paint an inaccurate picture of our industry.

In any event, I can say with confidence that at least 38 percent of patients were seen by a physician because that’s what happens in hospitals.  Doctors come write orders, nurses carry out the orders and the cafeteria always closes five minutes before you can get away to lunch.

So, we have huge discrepancies between the CDC, the OIG/SHS and MedPac.  Who are you going to believe?  My money is on the OIG because the CDC and MedPac do not have the authority to arrest me or monitor my email or phone calls.

So, after that long and rambling trip through the unfamiliar territory of numbers, we are back at the 30 percent mark referenced in the letter reproduced above sent by the OIG/SHS.  That leaves us with some disturbing facts.

We have an entity that looks like a RAC, walks like a RAC and quacks like a RAC but is really a Medicare Supplemental Review Contractor.

The RAC lookalike has noted that in 2010 providers did not adhere to guidance that was effective in 2011.

This non-adherence from 2010 constitutes NEW AND MATERIAL evidence that is being used as grounds to investigate home health care agencies for fraud.

And they will find it.   And it will not in any way, shape or form improve the care that our patients receive.

Note:   Pre-Nursing was the only curriculum that did not require math when I was in college which is why I chose nursing as a career.  Please feel free to correct any mathematical errors – politely, of course.

Nov 14

14 Comments

The 150M Settlement

It doesn’t make me feel good to know that Amedisys has had an exceptionally poor quarter and has tentatively entered into an agreement with the Department of Justice for a 150M settlement. I admit I am a little curious about the reference to The Stark Self-Referral Matter referenced in Amedisys’s press release but not overly disturbed. What disheartens me is that I am no longer surprised by the fact that when I searched the Internet for information, there were hundreds of results that all reported on the stock price.  Nobody stopped to wonder how a 150M dollar settlement would affect the care that Amedisys is supposed to be providing to patients.

Does this mean that I do not agree with the settlement? I don’t know all the details but I think that if the Federal government is going to get between Amedisys and that much cash, a legitimate question arises about their ability to care for patients and compete in an overcrowded market.

Amedisys is clear that in paying 150M to the government that they are not admitting any wrongdoing. I do not believe that they are willingly entering into this agreement because they couldn’t figure out what to do with extra cash. Not admitting wrongdoing is not the same as denying any wrongdoing. If they stayed out of the grey areas, I suspect they would be more than willing to pay a fraction of that to good defense lawyers.

While I don’t know the specifics of the settlement, I do know that it takes a lot of money to care for patients. I may find a bullet in my head in the morning but I strongly believe that if Amedisys is to pay 150M to the feds then Amedisys should no longer be afforded the privilege of billing Medicare. There is no shortage of stellar, high performing agencies who could pick up the slack and most of these smaller players would have never been given another chance by Medicare.

Alternatively, if they have been assessed as compliant and capable of caring for patients then the feds should lessen the penalty to an amount that does not interfere with patient care.

Just sayin……

Oct 16

10 Comments

Homecare vs Homecare

There is much philosophical talk about being divisive in our healthcare.  I don’t have a problem with being divisive.  This is my website and I can write what I want.  I am the senior editor – make no mistake. 

I do hold myself to certain standards, though and I think I may have fallen short on Monday and understated NAHC’s position on the Caps Limitation bill.   What I wrote was that both NAHC and The Partnership denied involvement regarding the introduction of the bill. 

In a nutshell the facts are:

NAHC – The organization that represents home health care and hospice on a national level has spoken out against the caps.   This is exactly what Bill Dombi of NACH wrote to me:

We do not support the episode cap and, in fact, have actively conveyed our opposition to Senate and House members.

The Partnership – A group of publicly traded homecare companies, plus a few stragglers, originally drafted the language in the bill but denies knowledge of how it was introduced.  This is what Eric Berger of The Partnership wrote in an email to me:

Like others throughout our community, the Partnership views targeted program integrity reform as a preferable alternative to further across-the-board cuts or the reimposition of cost-sharing that would impact innocent beneficiaries and their compliant providers. 

There’s only one sentence but if it were clinical documentation it would result in a denial.  Here are just a few of the questions it raises:

  1. Who are the ‘others’ in our community?
  2. Targeted Program integrity reform is what exactly?  Capping episode limits based on an arbitrary number determined by people who have never laid hands on a patient? 
  3. If there are innocent patients and compliant providers, does that mean that there are guilty beneficiaries?  Is that where the problem lies? 

As I stated in a post last week, there are some people who simply cannot write.  I cannot dance, remember?  The next email I received late Sunday night left no doubt about the position of the Partnership.  Again, from Eric Berger:

As for the Partnership’s plans with respect to this bill, we will not be taking any action on it — our total focus is on the rebasing and face-to-face regulations that pose a significant threat to our community. 

Initially, I was not going to make a big deal about this.  My concern is the bill itself – not The Partnership.  The members of The Partnership pay serious money to be a part of the elite group of companies that pay for lobbying efforts designed to benefit their companies.  Whether you like it or not, I do not believe there is anything illegal about it.   

So while it is very true that both NAHC and The Partnership deny having anything to do with the introduction of the bill, their positions on the bill could not be further apart.  I think that my original post would have been better if I had highlighted these differences.

Because honestly,  while I believe Eric Berger when he says The Partnership had nothing to do with the introduction of the bill, I worry about  his documentation skills.  He’s like a nurse who leaves the vital signs section blank and states the patient is stable.  We assume the nurse forgot to document the vital signs but it may be that the patient is dead.

Oct 13

15 Comments

Urgent Call to Action

The short title is the Medicare Fraud Reduction Act. This ‘act’ places caps on your aggregate number of episodes.  Representative Jim Matheson, a democrat from Utah introduced a bill into congress on October 4th, and Representative Brett Guthrie, a republican from Kentucky co-sponsored the bill.

H.R. 3245 of the 113th congress (you have to state the 113th congress or web results will show cocaine sentencing laws) as I understand it, states:

  1. No episode will be paid for after the agency meets its caps.
  2. The cap is 3.3 episodes for agencies that reside in a rural area
  3. The cap is 2.7 episodes for all the rest of you.
  4. When more than one agency sees a patient, the episode credit is divided proportionately between the agencies on a percentage of episodes basis.

If this looks familiar to you, it reads exactly like the proposal The Partnership for Quality Home Health (click to see members) submitted to Congress signed by Eric Berger.  Note the 4th paragraph of page four of the proposal.

And yet, both Eric Berger, CEO and paid lobbyist for The Partnership of Quality Home Healthcare, and Bill Dombi of NAHC deny having anything to do with this Bill.  Eric Berger pointed out that the language was available on the internet for anyone to use and apparently somebody did.

My first response was that one of them was being less than truthful but their denials were direct and to the point.  I do not believe that either man would commit to writing a falsehood.

You are obviously free to your own opinions about caps but I do not like this idea not one bit.  However, the best I can do is make sure you know about it so you can act on it in the manner in which you see fit.

In researching the so called recommended targets for fraud reduction, I found some interesting facts which I am certain have no bearing on the length of stay required by a patient.

  • In Bogalusa, Louisiana, 15 percent of residents have diabetes.  This is twice the rate of the rest of the country.
  • In East Carol Parish, a full 57 percent of children live in poverty which I assume is a fairly decent indicator of the overall economic status of the community.
  • Hancock county in Tennessee doesn’t report on drug use or alcohol use but they have more than triple the number of deaths from motor vehicle accidents.
  • Like the other hot spots, Hancock County has high unemployment (50% higher than the rest of the state) and very poor educational levels.
  • There are three counties in Mississippi that hit the target list.  Consider that in Mississippi taken as a whole, 32% of children grow up in poverty.  For the three fraudulent counties, the percentages are 46%, 52% and 53%.  If they are fraudulent, they aren’t very good at it.  Someone should be getting the money stolen from Medicare.
  • In one Mississippi county, a full 78 percent of people had water exceeding a violation in the past year.
  • Perhaps the most tragic is the violent crime in these three counties.  In Mississippi, 280 people out of every 100,000 is expected to become a victim of violent crime.  The county with poisonous water (Sharkey) has a very low rate of 72 incidents.  Jefferson County counted 443 victims per 100,000 but Claiborne county takes the prize with 770.
  • In Madison Parish, Louisiana, you have a one in ten chance of being a victim of violent crime which is a shame because it is one of my favorite places.  I had no idea I was in such danger.

Add it all together and you have a bill introduced to congress that will limit access to care to elderly people without resources.  Their families are stressed and stretched thin.  Neither the patients or their families have enough education or money to log on to a computer much less email their senator.  They are the men and women who didn’t need an education to farm our land and feed us for fifty years before they retired.

They are disproportionately African American and disproportionately elderly in the counties where they reside as the younger people who could leave have left.  For the most part they have outlived their usefulness and have no voice.   If we don’t speak up for them, who will?

Of course, I have gone way off track.  None of these tragic figures in any way contribute to longer lengths of stay.  Rather, the home health agencies commit fraud.

Most of my data was obtained from the County Road Maps.  It is a great site where you can find a plethora of information about your community and there is even grant money available if you can come up with a plan to address your data.

Its important that all of our voices are heard.  Even if you disagree with me, contact your state representative.  I am going to contact mine and I will also email and call Bill Matheson and Brett Guthrie every day for no other reason than I didn’t have any time off this weekend because of their ill advised nonsense.   If you click their names, you will be taken to their contact forms.

If for some reason you are inclined to like the proposed reform, I would like to hear from you so I could begin to understand who would think this was a good idea.

Comments welcome.

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