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April 10, 2014 at 01:03 PM
Physicians often fail to make a serious effort to look at the patients who are getting Medicare home health care benefits.
Officials at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General (HHS OIG) say a lack of proper “face-to-face encounters,” or failures to document the encounters according to Medicare standards, may affect about $2 billion per year in Medicare home health spending.
Medicare does not normally pay for long-term care (LTC) services for enrollees who live in nursing homes, but it does pay for home health care services.
HHS OIG reviewed 644 face-to-face encounter documents and found that 32 percent failed to meet Medicare program requirements.
