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SouthernCare, a Birmingham, AL-based hospice provider, and its shareholders agreed to pay the United States $24.7 million to settle allegations that the company submitted false claims to the government for patients treated at its hospice facilities, the U.S. Justice Department has reported.
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Terminally ill patients and their family caregivers often feel abandoned by their doctors and feel a sense of "unfinished business" with them, according to a new study by an oncologist at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance.
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Hospices have one additional year to work on overturning the elimination of the hospice wage index that was mandated in a 2008 Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) regulation. The signing of H.R. 1 - The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 by President Obama included the one-year moratorium.
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The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) recommendations to Congress for the reformation of the Medicare hospice benefit include strategies to remove incentives for long hospice lengths of stay, to improve oversight of hospice services and payments, and to improve data collection to facilitate better management of the hospice benefit.
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Although bereavement services are an integral part of hospice programs, not all services are viewed as beneficial to family members included in a study described in a recent issue of the Journal of Palliative Medicine.
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Decreasing hospital readmission rates from 28% to 12% for the patients participating in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Medical Adult Day Services Demonstration is only one indication that enabling home health patients to attend adult day center programs during their home health episode is beneficial.
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The home health agencies participating in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Medical Adult Day Services Demonstration had rules to follow regarding patient selection, partnership with adult day centers, and data collection, but they each were given the freedom to staff the program in the manner that worked best for their agency.
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Before they start their job managing the care of senior members, case managers at Senior Care Action Network (SCAN) Health Plan try to sort pills while wearing heavy gloves, strain to understand a speaker whose voice is muffled, and fill out a medical information form while wearing special glasses that simulate vision loss.
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A group of 15 Indiana hospices has a two-year head start on all other hospices to meet the Quality Assessment and Performance Improvement (QAPI) requirements of the new Conditions of Participation (COP).
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Face-to-face and telephone follow-up sessions appear to be more effective in the maintenance of weight loss for women from rural communities compared with weight loss education alone, according to a report in the Nov. 24 Archives of Internal Medicine. In addition, telephone counseling appears to be just as effective as face-to-to face counseling for weight loss management.
