After nearly 20 years, CMS has moved forward with drastic revisions to its Medicare and Medicaid Home Health Conditions of Participation (CoPs). The changes were originally effective this summer, but CMS has extended the effective date to January 13, 2018 — giving home health agencies a few more months to comply.
As an existing client, rest assured that MedForms has your orientation booklet covered. But how will it affect your booklet specifically? Here’s a quick break-down:
- Plan of Care: We will make any applicable changes to your existing verbiage.
(484.60 (c)(3)(i); §484.55 (c)(5)) - Discharge, Transfer and Referral Policy: We will make any applicable changes to your existing verbiage. (484.50 (a)(1)(i); (a)(6)(i))
- Patient Rights and Responsibilities: If your booklet contains our master template rights, we will make these changes accordingly. If your Patient Rights are highly customized, we ask that you either adopt our verbiage or provide all necessary revisions to comply with the new CoPs. (484.50)
- Patient In-Home Record: We will recommend adding this form if it’s not already in your booklet.
(§484.60(e)(4) “Any other pertinent instruction related to the patient’s care and treatments that the HHA will provide, specific to the patient’s care needs.”) - Visit Schedule: We will recommend adding this form if it’s not already in your booklet.
(§484.60(e)(1) “Visit schedule, including frequency of visits by HHA personnel and personnel acting on behalf of the HHA.”) - Medication Profile: We will recommend adding an additional column to this form if you have this form in your booklet.
(§484.60(e)(3) “Any treatments to be administered by HHA personnel and personnel acting on behalf of the HHA, including therapy services.”) - New Home Care Provider and Local Resource sections: We will add sections for the agency staff to record necessary names, phone numbers and addresses for the staff or state/federal agencies that serve the patient’s area. (484.50 (a)(2); 484.60 (e)(5))
- Minor verbiage changes throughout the booklet.
Your booklet(s) will only be updated next time you reorder. Keep in mind that these changes are lengthy in nature and will take a bit of time for editors to implement. Be sure to call to reorder in plenty of time to ensure you’re properly covered before implementation date and so you don’t run out of books in the meantime.
As a new client, jumpstart your preparations today by contacting us to get started with a custom, compliant patient orientation booklet.
For more information regarding these new CoP’s, visit the Federal Register for more information.
