CMS puts short-stay audits on hold
Learning objective
At the completion of this educational activity, the learner will be able to:
- Identify what prompted CMS’ decision to temporarily suspend 2-midnight short-stay Quality Improvement Organization audits and what the decision means for compliance efforts
There’s good news and bad news on the 2-midnight rule front.
The good news: CMS has put short-stay inpatient audits related to the 2-midnight rule on hold as of May 4.
The bad news: This isn’t a free pass, and it isn’t going to last.
"Response at hospitals should be to do nothing different," says Ronald Hirsch, MD, FACP, CHCQM, vice president of the Regulations and Education Group at Accretive Physician Advisory Services at Accretive Health in Chicago. "Follow the rules on every case. This is not a three-year delay; the audits will resume soon, and we have no idea if the look-back period will be altered to account for this delay."
The May announcement
Livanta, one of the two Beneficiary and Family Centered Care Quality Improvement Organizations (BFCC-QIO) charged with conducting 2-midnight rule compliance audits, posted a notification about the audit suspension on its website: http://bfccqioarea5.com/twomidnight.html. The announcement stated:
On May 4, 2016, CMS notified the BFCC-QIOs of a temporary pause of Two-Midnight Reviews in order to improve standardization across the program. During this period, Livanta will be collaborating with CMS and the other BFCC-QIO to ensure consistency in how the rule is applied to QIO case review. If your facility has submitted Livanta requested medical records, they will remain in the pipeline for review upon further direction from CMS. Going forward it is CMS’ intention that providers will have at least six weeks to implement changes prior to the next round of BFCC-QIO reviews.
"It seems that inconsistencies had resulted in many complaints, which is what prompted the suspension," says Stefani Daniels, RN, MSNA, CMAC, ACM, president and managing partner at Phoenix Medical Management, Inc., in Pompano Beach, Florida.
This suspension marks the second time CMS auditors have apparently fumbled 2-midnight rule interpretation. Medicare Administrative Contractors who conducted the initial probe and educate audits of the 2-midnight rule were also accused by hospitals of misinterpreting the standard?and hospitals had hoped that having BFCC-QIOs take over the task would solve the problem, says Hirsch. Unfortunately, it appears BFCC-QIOs are running into the same challenge.
When the BFCC-QIO audits first began back in October 2015, they brought some unwelcome surprises. Many hospitals anticipated that the reviews would only look at records from October 2015 forward. But hospitals soon began reporting that BFCC-QIOs were requesting records for cases as far back as May 2015, according to Hirsch. That wasn’t the only issue?BFCC-QIOs were also missing deadlines. Audit results were late, and the BFCC-QIOs were slowing the scheduled education for providers.
This created two problems for hospitals. First, the late BFCC-QIO audit results meant that hospitals with denied claims were poised to miss the filing deadline to rebill denied claims to Part B. Because of the delays in scheduling education related to the first round of claim denials, hospitals didn’t have an opportunity to understand their mistakes and fix them before the next set of audits began.
In addition, there was also some online buzz that BFCC-QIOs were misinterpreting the rule, says Hirsch. The main problem: benchmark admissions. Some hospitals reported that BFCC-QIOs were routinely denying inpatient admissions when patients spent one night as an outpatient in the emergency room or in observation services before they were admitted. This was the case even though these patients then spent a second night in the hospital as an inpatient that the physicians documented as medically necessary. This is a clear misinterpretation of the rule, says Hirsch. In other cases, the BFCC-QIOs were also denying the second midnight due to a lack of medical necessity, essentially overruling the judgment of hospital physicians.
Moving forward
As of presstime, it was unclear when the audits were going to resume or what the outcome of the suspension would be. In the meantime, though, hospitals should continue with business as usual?after all, it’s always good practice to assume claims will be audited and to be prepared for such a situation.
Best practices to follow to prepare for audits include those listed below:
- Review every short-stay admission?those between zero and one day?prior to billing.
- Ensure every patient’s status is appropriate up front, says Hirsch. Review the chart of every patient that goes upstairs.
- Use the physician advisor to check compliance on cases that are murky to ensure they meet one of the exceptions under the 2-midnight rule. Change cases that don’t meet an exception using condition code 44. If the problem isn’t discovered until after discharge, self-deny and rebill the claim.
- Ensure that case managers and physicians are up-to-date about any potential changes to the 2-midnight rule and how to comply with them.
In addition, it’s important to understand how audits work and be aware of any changes that will occur when they resume. KEPRO said before the audit suspension that auditors of short-stay claims need to see the following two components:
1.Documentation of medical necessity
2.Application of the 2-midnight rule
Reviewers also were charged with looking for quality-of-care issues and will validate coding associated with the claims. Before the suspension, a nonphysician using InterQual® would perform the first BFCC-QIO audit. If the case fails the initial review, a physician review would then follow, which is based on the physician’s medical judgment
Specifically, the physician reviewer would look at:
- Acuity of the patient’s signs and symptoms
- Medical predictability of adverse events
- Need for diagnostic studies
Another concurrent review was designed to look at physician documentation to ensure patients needed hospital-level care and that their admission was not for social, custodial, or convenience reasons.
Ultimately, when it comes to BFCC-QIO reviews, the advice remains the same despite the temporary suspension: Stay on top of this issue, make sure physicians are assigning patients to the proper status, and ensure docs have the documentation to back up their decisions.
Ask the expert
Navigating the skilled nursing benefit for Medicare
Learning objective
At the completion of this educational activity, the learner will be able to:
- Identify strategies to help patients who don’t qualify for inpatient admission find postacute options
Assigning the correct patient status is important not only to ensure that the hospital gets accurate payment for a patient stay, but also to ensure that the patient receives access to the postacute benefits to which he or she is entitled. One of the more problematic topics in this arena is the three-day inpatient stay required by Medicare for a patient to qualify for a covered postacute stay in a SNF. One reader submitted the question below on this topic, and we asked Janet L. Blondo, MSW, LCSW-C, LICSW, CMAC, ACM, CCM, the manager of case management at Washington Adventist Hospital in Takoma Park, Maryland, to supply an answer.
Q: As a case manager, I already know that my patients placed in observation don’t qualify to use their Medicare SNF benefits after a hospital stay. However, family members often oppose a patient’s discharge date, citing safety concerns and demanding that the patient be admitted as an inpatient for three days so that he or she can be transferred to a SNF to use the patient’s Medicare SNF benefit to pay for nursing home care. What do I do when the patient’s family members resist the plan of discharging their loved one home?
A: Family members often become concerned about how their loved one will manage when there is a change in the patient’s ability to provide self-care. An injury or illness that results in a hospital stay?even a short one?can prompt a temporary or permanent loss of function. Patients and families may have some knowledge that insurance could pay for some rehabilitation services.
Beginning in August 2016, the Notice of Observation Treatment and Implication for Care Eligibility (NOTICE) Act requires all hospitals to explain to patients?both verbally and in writing?what it means when they are placed in observation. The NOTICE Act also compels the hospital to inform patients that they do not qualify to use their Medicare SNF benefits to recover from a hospital stay. This may result in more patients demanding that they be admitted for inpatient care.
Despite the current emphasis on population health, few patients have long-term care plans in place. This means that seniors are caught unprepared after a short stay in hospital observation care. They may not be able to return to a home that lacks a 24-hour caregiver or that has stairs they can no longer negotiate.
Patients and family members often believe that their insurance, Medicare, will pay the entire cost for care in a nursing home. They don’t fully understand the difference between skilled versus custodial care, or that if Medicare does provide coverage, it won’t pay the entire cost of care and will cover costs only for a short time.
Since explaining the above information to patients can be challenging, the smart case manager should get busy and assess what options are available to the patient. First, review the situation and determine that the patient truly does not meet inpatient criteria. When in doubt, refer the case to your physician advisor without delay.
The 2016 OPPS final rule, CMS-1633-F, effective January 1, 2016, allows the physician to document the need for inpatient care based on a set of "complex medical factors," which include:
- Severity of signs and symptoms
- Current medical needs
- Risk of an adverse event occurring
Qualifying for inpatient care does not mean a patient must require hospitalization that extends for more than two midnights. If the patient truly does not meet inpatient criteria, next determine if he or she is a candidate for acute rehab. Acute rehab does not require a prior three-day or greater hospital stay. Does your patient have Medicare Part C? A managed Medicare plan does not require an inpatient stay of three days or more, although it does require an authorization for a SNF benefit.
Some secondary payers will cover a rehab stay in a SNF. Look at all of the patient’s insurance policies and call the payers. A Medigap policy will pay only if Medicare pays, which requires a three-day inpatient admission. Some patients, however, are covered by a spouse’s policy or have a policy from a previous job that is not a Medigap policy?these policies will potentially cover a SNF stay.
Ask if the patient has been in a nursing facility prior to the current hospital stay while using his or her Medicare SNF benefits. If the patient was in a SNF after a three-day qualifying hospital stay, and his or her discharge from the SNF was within 30 days of the expected date of admission for the new SNF stay, then chances are the patient’s stay will be covered under Medicare.
Case managers often don’t ask about private-pay funds. Patients may pay privately for care in a nursing home. Ask if the patient has a long-term care policy that will cover the cost. Alternatively, the patient’s family may assist with the funding. Some patients who own a home use a home equity line of credit to pay for the cost or apply for a reverse mortgage.
Applying for long-term care Medicaid is an option, but this can take a long time, and many nursing homes want a source of funding at the time the patient enters the facility.
A patient can also go home with family members who are able to help with care until the patient is able to make a more permanent plan. Family members who work can apply for family and medical leave while they are serving as caregivers.
Adult medical day care facilities also have all-day programs where patients can be cared for during the day while family members work. Patients can receive nursing education about their illness, undergo blood pressure and blood sugar checks, and receive physical and occupational therapy. Payment is provided through sliding-scale or private-pay funding, or by community Medicaid.
Finally, patients may benefit from skilled home health care services, covered by insurance or by private-duty aide care paid for with the patient’s (or family’s) funds.
If, after reviewing these options, none are acceptable to the patient or family, you may have to give the patient the Hospital-Issued Notice of Noncoverage, or HINN, which notifies the patient that you do not anticipate the hospital bill or subsequent rehab will be paid by Medicare. The notice may help the patient determine what course of action to take.
Editor’s note: Got a question? Email it to us and we’ll send it to one of our experts. Send questions to Kelly Bilodeau at [email protected].
10 things you should know to ensure successful discharge planning
Learning objective
At the completion of this educational activity, the learner will be able to:
- Identify strategies to comply with proposed Medicare changes to the discharge process
One of the more challenging aspects of a case manager’s job is helping to ensure a patient successfully transfers from the hospital to the next level of care. Under a set of proposed revisions to Medicare’s Conditions of Participation (CoP) announced in November 2015. This job may get even harder, more specific, and apply to more patients. The changes, among other things, will require hospitals, including critical access hospitals, to create discharge plans for more patients. Case managers will need a more direct plan to include patients and their caregivers in the discharge planning process, in particular taking into account their individual "goals and preferences." This discharge planning process will also need to start sooner?within 24 hours of admission instead.
So what can you do to ensure your organization is up for the challenge? In an April webinar titled "Discharge Planning: Realignment of Standards and Workflow," speaker Jackie Birmingham, RN, BSN, MS, CMAC, vice president emerita of clinical leadership for Curaspan Health Group in Newton, Massachusetts, and Janet L. Blondo, MSW, LCSW-C, LICSW, CMAC, ACM, CCM, the manager of case management at Washington Adventist Hospital in Takoma Park, Maryland, offered up some compliance tips that you can use to ensure your hospital is ready:
1.Assess your current discharge process. Under the proposed changes, the discharge planning process needs to start in the first 24 hours after the patient arrives at the facility. You’ll need to identify how your current processes work in order to make sure they comply with this timeline. Identify your current workflow?specifically, who does what, why they do it, and how it’s done. Ask the following questions:
- What is your current case management model?
- Who’s on your team?
- What’s their role?
- Who does the screening right now in the current
- Who does the patient assessment?
- Who makes referrals when you need to refer patients for services?
- In your current model, do the nurses perform the assessment for patients who go home while the social workers do the placements? Or do you have nurses and social workers assess everyone? "If you’re having all your patients assessed right now, well, you’re ahead of the game already, because that’s the new proposal," said Blondo.
Also think about why your processes were designed the way they are. "If you have it on one unit a certain way and not on another, think about what you need to do to change your practice so that perhaps every unit you can do assessment on every patient," said Blondo. "If your model is something that doesn’t seem to make sense with the proposal, what can you do to change it?"
Changes to bring the model in line could include adding technology (e.g., laptops, tablets) to speed up the process, adding staff members, or reassigning current staff members. "Perhaps some of your social workers can do UR," said Blondo. Alternatively, maybe a staff nurse can do an initial assessment instead of a case manager, or perhaps a nonclinical staff member can take over certain tasks. Taking the time to examine your current processes and think about how they can be switched up to meet the new requirements will give you the foundation for a new plan.
2.Drill documentation. Hold physicians accountable for following through and documenting discharge plans and dates. "If they’re documenting in the chart the discharge date and plan, that makes your job a little easier, because you have that in the chart already and can discuss that with the patient and their family," said Blondo. Take advantage of pre-procedure assessments by ensuring they are included in the chart, then making sure staff members follow through on that plan. "You don’t want Joint Commission or the state coming to do their survey and then you find out the assessment is not getting done because your staff has decided they want to do something different. So make sure everyone is doing the same," said Blondo.
3.Focus on delays. Use these potential discharge changes in the CoPs as an opportunity for process improvement. Look at what’s causing delays in your current process?use this information to improve systems and boost patient satisfaction. "You’re going to improve, perhaps, length of stay with this increased attention with discharge planning," said Blondo.
4.Make rounds count. If you are currently using rounds, examine what they’re being used for and how they’re working. Blondo says it’s important to ask:
- Are rounds being used for discharge planning?
- Are they used for the patient experience to improve your scores?
- Are they used for throughput or for some other reason?
After thinking about the current purpose your rounds serve, consider how they can be modified to fit your new objectives. "Many people just do one type of rounds per day, but you could actually be creative with these. There are some hospitals that I know of that divide rounds into different parts of the day," said Blondo. "For instance, you might want to think about doing rounds early in the morning for those patients that will be discharged [later] that day." The discussion could center on determining whether those patients are prepared to leave and have the right resources. Another idea is to add rounds to the short-stay area or outpatient area for procedures done late in the day. "And if you have case managers in the emergency room, you could ask them to round for those areas, catching any patients that might need something late in the day after your regular case management staff have left," said Blondo.
5.Understand patient options. This topic includes both big-picture and smaller issues. Case managers should focus on patient-based issues, which relate to talking to the patient, as well as on setting the patient’s broader goals and preferences. The organization’s systems must be set up to give patients a choice of postacute options. But keep in mind, when working with patients, you’ll always come across those who don’t like what you’re doing or who don’t agree with you and want to go another direction. "You need to have something standardized and something that you can fall back on when you’re presented with a patient and family who, in their eyes, have a reasonable goal and clinically or medically or psychosocially, they don’t," said Birmingham. Staff members must understand the concept of patient choice. "The staff must be comfortable that they are doing the right thing for the patient and the right thing for networks and the right thing for the organization."
It’s also important for staff to understand that the patient has the right to refuse the plan. "[The patient] may be in denial. They may be suffering grief," said Birmingham. The hospital should have a policy for patients leaving against medical advice (AMA), but case management must have its own discharge planning policy for those leaving AMA. In these instances, it’s not just enough to have the patient sign a paper, but rather actively assist the patient with the transition by ensuring that he or she has transportation and needed prescriptions. Even though there is an exemption for patients who signed out AMA and are readmitted the hospital, the hospital should have a plan for how to work with these patients, said Birmingham., said Birmingham.
You should also consider planning for a patient’s deficits related to loss of functioning, whether it be ADLs or IADLs. Birmingham recommended asking the following questions:
- Is the patient medicated and therefore unable to participate in planning?
- Does the patient need to have a conservatorship?
- Is there conflict among the patient’s children or the patient’s siblings?
- Does the patient have a family or responsible person?
- Is the patient appealing the discharge?
A plan should be in place to address the answers to these questions.
6.Help patients achieve their goals. This is something that organizations should have been doing all along, but there is much more emphasis on it now. A problem arises when the patient’s goals and preferences don’t align with what is medically necessary or what is reasonable and necessary. In these instances, it may be wise to involve social workers. "Look at some of the things that patients might be going through?denial, grief that might affect their decision-making at the time," said Birmingham. "With the family dynamics, there might be family members trying to convince the patient to make a decision that isn’t really what the patient wants." Ultimately, the goal is to help the patient make the decision that is best for him or her, but also to think about what is medically the best option.
7.Involve the physician. Physicians are an integral part of discharge planning, so it’s important to make sure they are actively involved in the process. This communication between the patient and the physician needs to be sensitive to generational and cultural differences. "To involve perhaps some of the older patients, just have the doctor come in and say, ‘We want you to do this,’ " said Blondo. "That might not work for younger generation or baby boomers who are used to rebelling, but if you have the doctor come in and say, ‘This is what we’re recommending and this is why’ and help the patient to understand why it is recommended."
While it may be easier to foster good communication if you’re working with a hospitalist, it can be more of a challenge if the physician is community based. "How will you manage when the patient is transferred to another facility? It’s not been a problem if you’re transferring the patient to another hospital, but if that patient is being transferred to a SNF, there haven’t been that many times when the doctors have called to the doctor in that SNF to give them an update," said Blondo. Have a plan in place to ensure the communication lines are always open.
8.Work to decrease unplanned readmissions and improve patient outcomes. "Readmissions are an old problem with new incentives," said Birmingham. Readmissions can be strongly linked to location and patient access to resources, which shows that they often depend on factors other than the medical treatment the patient received. This underscores the importance of ensuring your patients have access to things like food and transportation when they leave the facility. "Is your [patient’s] area in a food desert? No car, no supermarket store within a mile?and that makes a huge difference," said Birmingham. If this is the case, your organization might want to develop or contact an existing program that delivers food to the homes of qualifying individuals. "Home health agencies could do that too for some programs to be able to provide some fresh groceries to some patients," she said.
Also find out if your patient has been readmitted in the past, a risk factor for readmissions. "You can look to see if a patient is readmitted from an acute level of care, but you’ll need to ask the patient if they’ve been in the emergency room in the past 30 days, if they were admitted from a facility SNF," said Blondo. "Often, that information is sent with them to the hospital, but you can ask them." Ask if the patient was receiving home health services prior to admission. Encourage physicians to include this type of information in the history and physical to ensure it won’t be missed.
"We’re never going to be perfect and have no readmissions, because some patients have a legitimate need to come back to the hospital within those 30 days, but look at your readmissions. Learn from who is coming back and think about what strategies you can put in place for that," said Blondo.
9.Keep the focus where it belongs. "Discharge planning is a patient-centered function," said Birmingham. "You can do utilization review without talking to the patient. You can do quality improvement without talking to the patient and family, but you can’t do discharge planning." For this reason, discharge planning can be very rewarding to clinicians who want to be involved in the patient’s care, and to be there for them when they’re at their most vulnerable.
10.Take your cues from the experts. While Medicare’s CoPs aren’t a cookbook on how to run your organization, they are a good place to start because they’re based on years of evidence. "Many of the changes in the original CoPs happen because commenters send in a comment to CMS and CMS responded and actually changed the proposed rule," said Birmingham. "Now, will they change these proposed [discharge planning] rules? I don’t think so, and I think that’s because they’ve been published as interpretive guidelines for over two years." That means these discharge changes are likely here to stay. Like all other CoPs, they should be blended into your workflow and your strategies and partnerships with other departments, said Birmingham.