The National Association for Homecare & Hospice (NAHC) is trying to gather some data and information from hospice members on the current legislative flexibility that allows hospices to perform the face-to-face (F2F) eligibility recertification visit using telehealth. The data will support our congressional advocacy to extend this flexibility, either temporarily (ie another two years) or permanently.
There are some congressional members and staff who harbor concerns that this allowance to do the F2F via telehealth is a fraud/program integrity risk that might fuel greater numbers of inappropriate recertifications of ineligible patients that could result in longer lengths of stay and higher rates of live discharges. NAHC believes these concerns are misplaced and do not reflect the reality of how the virtual F2F visits are being used today. We are seeking data and reflections on the F2F virtual allowance to respond to these concerns.
Please answer the questions below (please note that if you do not have hard data on these visits, your best back-of-the-envelope estimates are also very helpful. Any information gathered that gets shared with congressional staff will be anonymized and non-identifiable).