Home Health Blogger

To Be a 5-Star Agency, Pay Close Attention to Rehabilitation Potential

Value-based Purchasing (VBP) & Medicare Reimbursement

Medicare's Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) became effective for all certified home health agencies on 1/1/2023. Under VBP your Agency's Medicare payments are determined by three conditions: (1) CAHPS - patient satisfaction scores, (2)...

Posted by Melissa Cott on Jan 30, 2024

Home Health Ethics: Explaining Patient Rights on Admission

In the healthcare setting, ethical behavior includes

      1. respecting patient choice,
      2. protecting patient confidentiality, privacy, and security, and
      3. administering health care services according to professionally-accepted standards of practice.

Posted by Melissa Cott on Nov 9, 2023

Can Your Governing Body Answer These 10 Questions?

Medicare's Conditions of Participation (CoP) requires a Home Health Governing Body that must oversee hundreds of policies and procedures to monitor and regulate infection control, quality assurance, fiscal performance and accounting, emergency preparedness, employee credentials and...

Posted by Melissa Cott on Jul 31, 2023

Home Health CoPs: Emergency Preparedness Checklist

In January 2018 Medicare made multiple changes to the language of the condition regarding Emergency Preparedness §484.102. Medicare also created an exception to emergency preparedness testing and drills: if the HHA experiences an emergency - that requires activation of the emergency...

Posted by Melissa Cott on Jul 11, 2023

Does Your Annual Meeting Include These 11 (Required) Items?

Medicare's Conditions of Participation (CoP) requires an HHA's Governing Body to regularly evaluate the policies and procedures that regulate the Agency's:

  • Agency-wide risk management
  • Patient-specific risk management
  • Emergency Preparedness
  • Employee Management: continuing education,...

Posted by Melissa Cott on Jul 10, 2023

The 12 Best In-Services for Home Health Aides

As you know, Medicare's requirements for home health aide in-services are the following (Standard §484.80(d); Tag G774):"§484.80(d) Standard: In-service training. A home health aide must receive at least 12 hours of in-service training during each 12-month period. In-service training...

Posted by Melissa Cott on Jun 26, 2023

Infection Control Teaching for Home Health Patients

Given the current focus on COVID-19, other infectious processes commonly experienced by home health patients - pneumonia, UTI’s, hepatitis, and wound infections - still pose significant challenges to patients and home health clinicians.

Posted by Melissa Cott on May 19, 2023

3 Steps to Effective Home Health QAPI

CHAP, JCAHO, ACHC & Medicare require that “The group of professional personnel meets frequently to advise the agency on professional issues, to participate in the evaluation of the agency’s quality assurance program...”

Your Agency's Incident Reporting System is the foundation for...

Posted by Melissa Cott on Apr 10, 2023