Study and Report on the Development of Home Health Payment Revisions to Ensure Access to Care, and Payment for Severity of Illness

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid ServicesSpecial Open Door Forum: Study and Report on the Development of Home Health Payment Revisions to Ensure Access to Care, and Payment for Severity of IllnessThursday, March 31, 2011 - 1:00 p.m.-2:30 p.m. ET
CMS needs your help identifying  beneficiaries who may have difficulty accessing Medicare home health services.  We would like to hear about your experiences serving hard to reach populations. Also, we would like you to describe challenges certain beneficiaries may experience in accessing Medicare home health services.  This Special Open Door Forum will be dedicated to this very important issue and sharing your first hand experiences.  We hope that you will take advantage of this unique and valuable opportunity to help us better define and understand the low-income, underserved and/or high severity beneficiaries for whom the HH PPS may not accurately account and serve.  For more information, please download:Home Health Study Literature Reviewhttp://www.cms.gov/HomeHealthPPS/Downloads/HHPPS_LiteratureReview.pdf
Special Open Door Forum Informational Slideshttp://www.cms.gov/HomeHealthPPS/Downloads/HHPPS_StudyODF.pdf

Special Open Door Forum Participation Instructions:
This forum will be available as a streaming audio webcast over the Internet. To register to hear the call over the Internet, visit:  http://www.cms.gov/apps/events/event.asp?id=634.
A limited number of phone lines are available for people who wish to ask a question during the Forum, or have technical problems with the audio stream. You can call 1-800-837-1935 at any time after 12:45 p.m. ET and use Conference ID 51381075. You will be able to hear the Forum while you are on hold.

Note:
You can see live closed captioning from the Federal Relay Center at:  http://www.fedrcc.us//Enter.aspx?EventID=1733209&CustomerID=321. You must open a second tab or window and use Internet explorer with Flash enabled to access this service. Participants who use the Federal Relay Center, can download a transcript of the closed captioning. Visit: http://www.fedrcc.us/FedRcc/Default.aspx  for more information.
For phone users, TTY Communications Relay Services are available for the Hearing Impaired. For TTY services dial 7-1-1 or 1-800-855-2880 and a Relay Communications Assistant will help.
An Encore audio recording of this call that can be accessed by dialing 1-800-642-1687 and using Conference ID: 51381075. This recording will be available approximately 2 hours after the conference and will be available for 10 days.

An audio recording and transcript of this Special Forum will be posted to the Special Open Door Forum website at: http://www.cms.gov/OpenDoorForums/05_ODF_SpecialODF.asp and will be accessible for downloading beginning on or around April 15, 2011.  For automatic emails of Open Door Forum schedule updates (E-Mailing list subscriptions) and to view Frequently Asked Questions please visit our website athttp://www.cms.gov/opendoorforums/.

Thank you for your interest in CMS Open Door Forums.

Dallas L Alford IV, CPA is a licensed Certified Public Accountant in the state of North Carolina and owner of Atlantic Financial Consulting, a consulting firm that provides comprehensive medical billing services, practice management consulting, coding audits, Medicare compliance, Medicare RAC support and other general medical practice consulting services.
To learn more about Atlantic Financial Consulting you may visit their website at http://atlanticfinancial.us or contact Dallas L Alford IV, CPA directly at 1 888-428-2555, Ext. 200.