Ozark, Mo. – May 31, 2011 – Home health care web-based software and services vendor HEALTHCAREfirst and its employees have donated $11,355 to Convoy of Hope to aid in relief efforts for the victims of the recent tornado in Joplin, Missouri. In only one day, employees of HEALTHCAREfirst collected $6,355. The company added an additional $5,000. (more…)
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Volume 3, Number 14 — April 13, 2011 |
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Also from the Home Health News blog:
This week’s news and analyses, summarized below, are found in their entirety at www.homecaretechreport.com
“If your CEO answers your question about how to prepare for the conversion from ICD-9 to ICD-10 coding by saying, ‘I’ve already assigned that to the IT department,’ you hereby have my permission to tell him, or her, ‘Are you kidding me?’” With this, two experts, one an RN and the other a CPA, offered a rapt audience a firm warning: get started NOW.
If you have not yet been exposed to the term “Readmission Management,” it is only a matter of time. Staff writer Audrey Kinsella describes an educational event sponsored by Philips Healthcare at the recent meeting of the American College of Cardiology that may have permanently inserted the term into healthcare vocabulary.
Nearly one and a half billion dollars ($1.445) in federal funds slated this year by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for four rural telecommunications project capital subsidies may fall victim to the partisan battle currently taking place over the larger federal budget. — SouthernCare, Inc., a 15-state hospice company, expands use of mobile application combining services from Google, HTC, Verizon and CellTrak. — Free report available for download describes healthcare’s readiness for ACOs
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| Our Most-Read Story from Last Week’s Issue:
The Growing Importance of Revenue Cycle Management: Introduction to Decade’s Hottest Topic More than the latest buzzword, Revenue Cycle Management is a philosophy for running a business. In today’s Medicare, Medicaid, Private Duty and non-skilled homecare services businesses, managing revenue from beginning to end means improving compliance as much as it means ensuring complete and accurate billing processes and A/R follow up procedures.
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CAREER CORNER
Central Illinois Agency Seeks Director Carle Foundation Hospital is actively recruiting a Director to guide and develop strategic and tactical operational goals for Carle’s Home Health Services. Salary and benefits are competitive and will be commensurate with experience. Responsibilities include:
Requirements: appropriate candidate will be a dynamic leader with proven administrative abilities and:
Preferred skills:
Forward resume to: Jeff Parker – Director, Executive Search Division Stratum Med, Inc./Carle Foundation Hospital 102 East Main St. Suite 502 Urbana, IL 61801 Fax: (217) 337-4181 jparker.execsearch@stratummed.com Carle Foundation Hospital, located in Champaign/Urbana near the University of Illinois campus, is a 325-bed Level 1 Trauma Center servicing approximately 1.3 million residents in 42 counties in Central/Eastern Illinois and Western Indiana in conjunction with the Carle Physician Group, a 315-physician multi-specialty group practice encompassing over 50 specialties at thirteen regional branch clinics. The Home Care Technology Report Career Corner is available at no charge to job seekers. If you are interested in a position in home care for the first time or if you are simply looking for a change, HCTR will post your job skills and preferred city and state for all of our subscribers to see, with or without your name. Submit your request to us via email at: careercorner@homecaretechreport.com If you are a home care agency or technology vendor seeking qualified employees, send your request to the same address. Post a description in one issue for $100 or a full month for $300. $750 for full quarter contracts; job posted may be changed during the quarter. |
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UPCOMING CONFERENCES AND EVENTS
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Tim Rowan
Home Care Technology Report accepts articles for publication.
Send submissions for review to editor@homecaretechreport.com.
Tim Rowan’s Home Care Technology Report is published by Rowan Consulting Associations, Inc., Colorado Springs, CO. All rights reserved. Request reprint permission by writing to editor@homecaretechreport.com. HCTR is free to subscribers and supported by its generous advertisers. To inquire about advertising, write to Kristin in our ad sales department, adsales@homecaretechreport.com. HCTR advertisers are given 50% discounts for their ad contracts in other HHNS newsletters.
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“If your CEO answers your question about how to prepare for the conversion from ICD-9 to ICD-10 coding by saying, ‘I’ve already assigned that to the IT department,’ you hereby have my permission to tell him, or her, ‘Are you kidding me?’”
In a keynote session at last week’s McKesson home care and hospice customer meeting, Melanie Duerr, RN, a Fazzi Associates partner, and her sister Kathleen O’Donnell, CPA, a professor at Onondaga Community College, offer stern warnings that now is the time to begin to prepare for the ICD-10 conversion and that your project must include every department. (more…)
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Volume 3, Number 13 — April 6, 2011 |
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Also from the Home Health News blog: RAC Assistance for Home Care • RAC Assistance for Hospices • The Informed Home Care Clinician • Preventing Hospitalizations
This week’s news and analyses, summarized below, are found in their entirety at www.homecaretechreport.com One of our advertisers has been promoting a service designed to aggregate financial information in order to help home care providers make a strong case before Medicaid officials intent on slashing rates. Though the fee to use the site and benefit from its data analyses was extremely low, the company has decided to make it completely free. We spoke with Frank Giannantonio, president of FGA, Inc., to find out what motivated such a move.
More than the latest buzzword, Revenue Cycle Management is a philosophy for running a business. In today’s Medicare, Medicaid, Private Duty and non-skilled homecare services businesses, managing revenue from beginning to end means improving compliance as much as it means ensuring complete and accurate billing processes and A/R follow up procedures. We do not often run editorial pieces, preferring to stick to reporting straight news. However, the budget battle raging in Congress right now is on the verge of doing tremendous damage to Medicare, including its home care benefit. Unfortunately, current events are too often interpreted without reference to their historical context. So we went back eight years to resurrect a legislative story that may help us better understand Representative Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) new proposal to do away with Medicare entirely. To be clear: as opinion pieces are supposed to be, this one is admittedly one-sided, though its point of view is based on historical facts that are easily verifiable. It will come across as critical of both Ryan and one other giant of CMS history, Thomas A. Scully. Reader feedback is welcome, whether you agree or disagree. It is intended to be read in tandem with this week’s report (above) on a decision made by one of our advertisers, FGA, Inc., a decision quite the opposite of what Scully and Ryan are known for.
Dr. Farzad Mostashari has been named to succeed Dr. David Blumenthal as head of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at HHS, effective April 8. — Select Data delivers Electronic Medical Record
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As evidenced by this week’s editorial, there are enough bad players looking to use Medicare to further their own agendas and line their own pockets. This is why it is always a pleasure when we can bring to these pages the story of a person or company making a decision to put the needs of providers and patients ahead of their own.
Frank Giannantonio, founder and president of FGA, Inc., a New Jersey billing and financial consulting firm, has done something we consider gracious. (more…)
by Ed Buckley
with Tim Rowan
Lost revenue and poor compliance go hand in hand. They infiltrate a home health care agency together. Managing revenue cycle means improving compliance as much as it means ensuring complete and accurate billing processes and A/R follow up procedures. (more…)
Analysis
One of the most serious problems plaguing our representative form of government is the uncontrolled “revolving door” between elected and appointed offices and high-salary private industry lobbyist positions. Year after year, individuals do selfish things to make us wonder about the objectivity of all of our elected and appointed officials.
When Paul Ryan (R-WI) included the dissolution of Medicare in his 2012 budget proposal this week, and in doing so proposed an unimaginable windfall for health insurance companies, I wondered whether he is to be the next Washingtonian to enter the revolving door. While I insist on remaining optimistic about his personal integrity until proven otherwise, I remembered one precedent from only eight years ago that shakes my optimism. (more…)
In response to what they consider disturbing mandates issued by Medicaid officials in two states and parts of two others, a collection of home care and hospice industry telephony vendors, providers, technology vendors and state associations has formed a new organization, “The Electronic Visit Verification Standards Workgroup.” The organization’s members believe rules established by Medicaid officials in South Carolina, Tennessee, Florida and Texas infringe on free market trade and will have far-reaching, detrimental consequences should other states follow suit. (more…)
Speculation has run wild for two years about how CMS might change the home care payment system this time. Talk of payment bundling, where hospitals get all the money and dole it out as they see fit, is already appearing as a workshop topic. Rumors about payments going directly to patients have come and gone. All of this precedes any type of formal statement by CMS, MedPAC or Congress.
To help cut through rumors and exaggerations, HCTR is going to take on a study of the Accountable Care Organization (ACO) concept that appeared in outline form in last year’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). Where facts are available, we will pass them along. Where experts have paved the way before us, we will quote them, interview them, or let them write articles of their own.
This week, we begin with an analysis by longtime student of the way elected and unelected federal employees think, Jeff Lewis. We caught up with the founder and former owner of Lewis, Inc., a Baton Rouge-based home health care software company now a part of HealthCarefirst, to ask whether he is experiencing any degree of withdrawal eight months after leaving the industry that had been his life for over 25 years.
He says he has not returned to health care in any official manner, though he has had a few meetings with providers interested in bringing him on to help shape their future plans. But has not found the right role yet, which he says is no surprise because he sees the approach of a healthcare system that is very different from what we have today. If this paper is any indication then we have to agree.
Never one to mince words, Lewis told us when he offered to write the following article, “In the eight months since I left home care, I can’t say I have looked anyone in the eye who is going to be a part of the future of home care, based on what they tell me they are planning.”
A constant researcher, Lewis’ understanding of what has been presented so far from government and media sources seems to exceed that of many with whom we have spoken or whom we have listened to at conferences. Where specifics are still unknown, he clearly says so. Where well-established patterns from the past are likely to be repeated, he draws some conclusions as to how they will apply to this decade’s developments.
With this article as a starting point, we will hear from other experts in future issues and report on rules as CMS releases them. Your reactions to Lewis’ analysis of the new world of ACOs, and the things home care and hospice providers and their technology vendors can be doing now to prepare, are welcome. (more…)
In parts one and two of this series, we discussed some of the impacts of the Affordable Care Act on home care and hospice providers, evidence that patients truly are being discharged from the hospital at far greater risk of death than they were 10 years ago, and the long list of pros and cons of point-of-care automation. In our final installment, we bring all these things together with a study of the interrelationship between clinical documentation accuracy and the government’s accelerated efforts to stop Medicare and Medicaid fraud and abuse. (more…)
