HCFA offers three-month grace period on 15-minute requirement
By MATTHEW HAY
HHBR Washington Correspondent
BALTIMORE The Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA; Baltimore) has instructed its fiscal intermediaries to give all home health agencies a three-month grace period to comply with the requirement to report home health visits in 15-minute increments rather than a number of service visits beginning with service dates on or after July 1, 1999. Eliminating this new requirement became the industry’s chief regulatory objective once HCFA backed off sequential billing, softened the surety bond requirement, and postponed OASIS. HCFA claimed that it had been notified by many home health agencies that the demands of Y2K compliance were competing with their efforts to implement the new reporting requirement.
According to HCFA, agencies should make every effort to prepare their billing systems to conform to these changes by July 1. "If an agency cannot prepare their systems to report these (HCFA Common Procedure Coding System) codes by July 1, 1999, the system will allow these claims to be processed without them for a grace period that will end Sept. 30, 1999." The program memorandum (PM) issued last week adds that "agencies should be aware that visits for all claims will be counted by our system based on the number of revenue line items."
According to HCFA, "If an agency continues to report multiple visits (rather than 15-minute increments) in Form Locator 46 on any given revenue line, that line will be interpreted after July 1, 1999, to represent a single visit, and that provider may be underpaid." The agency would then need to submit an adjustment claim showing the additional visits as separate line items in order to receive the correct payment, the PM added.
"By allowing this degree of flexibility for a temporary period, providers can be assured that their cash flow will not be stopped by rejected claims," HCFA officials said. "Some adjustment billing could be necessary, but this can be avoided by billing one visit per line."
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