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Rounding up could get you into trouble.

Hospices that round up their hours to meet the continuous care threshold will have to change their practices.

So says regional home health intermediary Palmetto GBA in a set of recently posted hospice coalition meeting questions. Hospices can round up only once they have met the eight-hour threshold for continuous care, the RHHI says in a Q&A issued in response to an Aug. 8 meeting.

And hospices should always show the exact number of hours furnished in documentation, although the billing may round up those hours, Palmetto says.

Other Q&As at address nursing homes "skilling" patients, QIO reviews and consolidated billing.

• Hurricane Rita is making recovery from Hurricane Katrina even more difficult for some home care providers. One example is Lafayette, LA-based home nursing chain LHC Group Inc. LHC, which went public earlier this year, reports that "a significant number" of its agencies "are located in Southwest Louisiana, directly in the path of destruction of Hurricane Rita."

The company expects lost revenue in its third and fourth quarters due to temporary evacuations and lost contact with caregivers and referral sources, higher fuel costs, and other costs associated with restoring service to patients in the affected area. "It is unfathomable that we would experience two storms of this magnitude in less than one month," LHC CEO Keith Myers says in a release. "We expect that recovery in the areas affected by Katrina will now take longer than we had earlier anticipated because the second storm has stretched our resources further."

LHC predicts operations will return to normal in its fourth quarter.

Members of the U.S. Senate and House continue to wrangle over Katrina relief measures. And President Bush has now called for substantial new spending cuts for entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid to offset hurricane relief.

• The Accreditation Commission for Health Care is requesting deemed status from Medicare for home health agencies. If granted, that means HHAs accredited by ACHC won't have to undergo state surveys for Medicare certification, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services explains in a Sept. 23 Federal Register notice.

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) and the Community Health Accreditation Program (CHAP) are currently the only approved national accreditation organizations for HHAs, CMS notes.

Parties wishing to comment on whether ACHC requirements meet or exceed the Medicare conditions for participation for home health agencies can submit comments until Oct. 24. The notice is at .

• TLC Health Care Services Inc.'s Illinois unit has purchased the home care business of Northwestern Memorial Home Health Care, the Lake Success, NY-based company says in a release.

TLC purchased Northwestern, whose 150 em-ployees provide home care services to 3,600 patients annually in the Chicago area, from parent Northwestern Memorial Hospital for undisclosed terms.

"The transaction marks the first acquisition by TLC since its purchase by Arcapita Inc. in February of this year," TLC notes. "The capital support structure and backing of Arcapita," formerly Crescent Capital Investments Inc., will fuel TLC's organic growth and "targeted expansion," the company says.

• The recently finalized 2005 hospice cap wasn't good news for for-profit hospice chain VistaCare Inc. The Scottsdale, AZ-based company is projecting an extra $1.6 million revenue reduction in the year ending Sept. 30, thanks to the Medicare per patient cap. Total exposure will be about $8.6 million for the year, the company predicts.

VistaCare had expected a higher cap. "This is certainly a setback for the company as it continues to try and pull itself out of its cap issues," Wall Street firm Legg Mason says in analysis issued Sept. 30.

CMS has yet to announce its revised 2004 hospice cap amount (see Eli's HCW, Vol. XIV, No. 31), which could bring further bad news for the cap-challenged chain, VistaCare admits.

• Akron-based Cambridge Home Health Care is opening its 23rd office in Ohio on Oct. 10, the home care company says. The new Athens office is part of an organization that serves more than 2,100 Medicare, Medicaid and private pay patients with 1,500 staff.

• Tennessee's top provider of power wheelchairs will reimburse Medicare and Medicaid almost $1 million over false claims charges. Cooke-ville-based Allied Home Medical is paying back $930,075 for equipment that wasn't medically necessary, The Tennessean reports. The claims were submitted in 2001 and 2002.

Allied agreed to enter the settlement without admitting any wrongdoing, according to the newspaper. The company wanted to avoid the risk and ex-pense of litigation.

• The list of sponsors for the Hobson-Tanner bill continues to grow. Introduced by Reps. Dave Hobson (R-OH) and John Tanner (D-TN), the Durable Medical Equipment Access Act of 2005 currently has 26 co-sponsors from 15 states.
 
H.R. 3559 would modify competitive bidding requirements to ensure beneficiary access and protect small DME suppliers.