CMS keeps changing the PECOS deadline. Will your July claims be denied or not? Uncertainty is frustrating. Home care agencies and their referring physicians just want CMS to get the online application system working and make up their mind about when they will enforce it. One by one, we are hearing about software vendors coming to the rescue. This story about one of them, ContinuLink, includes a comprehensive history of PECOS’s fluid deadlines.
We also reprint verbatim CMS’s July 16 announcement of and rationale for its proposed 4.75% Home Health PPS rate reduction. If you have your own copy of the announcement and noticed that the link to the July 23 Federal Register is incorrect, check the end of this article for the correct one.
Included as well is the pertinent excerpt from the FR describing instructions for delivering your comments to CMS.
Though the deadline has been pushed back a few months, RHHIs will soon deny payment for home health care claims if the physician authorizing Medicare services was not registered in the Medicare Provider Enrollment, Chain and Ownership System ( PECOS) or opted out of Medicare by the date services began. Wouldn’t it be handy if your referral intake software included a direct link to the PECOS database? We have found two such services so far.
