Medicare & Medicaid Skilled Nursing Blog

Want To Avoid an Audit? Remember to PREPARE

Posted by Washington Health Care Association on Thu, Oct 16, 2014

This is a featured guest blog article written by:

WHCA - Washington Health Care Association

On Thursday, October 9th, Kris Mastrangelo, Owner and CEO of Harmony Healthcare, presented a webinar entitled “The OIG Report: Best Practices in Audit Prevention.” The report makes strong statements regarding alleged MDS inaccuracies, over coding, and billing by skilled nursing facilities. Mastrangelo outlined keys to success to help communities avoid audits and find success with their compliance programs with the acronym “PREPARE”:

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Topics: Documentation, OIG, Compliance, Audits,

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Proposed Rule FY2015

Posted by Kris Mastrangelo on Mon, Jun 09, 2014

CMS Proposed Rule FY2015: On May 6,2014, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a Proposed Rule [CMS-1605-P] under the Medicare Program; Prospective Payment System and Consolidated Billing for Skilled Nursing Facilities. The Proposed Rule illustrates the proposed Fiscal Year 2015 Medicare payment rates for skilled nursing facilities (SNFs). The Proposed Rule outlines an estimated increase in SNF payments of 2.0%. This estimated increase is attributable to the 2.4% market basket increase, reduced by the 0.4% point multifactor productivity adjustment required by law. As the actual amount of change in the market basket index at -0.3 did not exceed the 0.5 percentage point threshold, the payment rates for FY2015 do not include a forecast error adjustment.

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Topics: Final Rule, Medicare, CMS, OIG, PPS, Skilled Nursing Facility

Is Your Facility Compliant with the ACA's '13 Compliance Regulations

Posted by Kris Mastrangelo on Thu, Oct 24, 2013

The Long Term Care industry, one of the most regulated industries, is now facing discriminating enforcement concerning business and financial practices. Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNFs) must be aware of the risk for non-compliance with the requirements arising from the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010. Of particular significance to facility administrators, the ACA declared March 23, 2013, as the deadline by which skilled nursing facilities must adopt an effective compliance program.

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Topics: PEPPER, OIG, Compliance