Research shows that patients who visit their doctors shortly after inpatient discharge prove far less likely to need readmission. Medicare is now willing to pay doctors more than ever for coordinating outpatient / community care with other providers after discharge from a hospital or nursing home. Besides the challenge of doctors not being familiar with the new 2013 billing codes, doctors also have a timing challenge. Their offices need to document attempts to reach the patient within two business days of the discharge. Are your doctors always aware of hospital and nursing home discharges? If not, you can certainly help. Many times, these patients are discharged back into your care. Up to 25% of patients in home health have a hospital admission during the home health plan of care. Even if you are in the middle of your episode of care, this does not preclude the doctor from providing and billing for Transitional Care Management services. Verify whether your doctors want to bill the high-paying Transitional Care Management codes and if they are in excellent communication with the hospitals and nursing homes about discharges. If the doctors are not well-aware of inpatient discharges, set up cooperative systems to notify doctors about hospital discharges as soon as your agency knows. This will give your doctors every opportunity to help protect patient health, help you with your readmission numbers, and to help themselves to Medicare incentive payments. More importantly, this will distinguish your agency as a true ally to the doctors. For more information on how you can be the one to help your doctors make more money while also improving your own hospital admission numbers, visit this page of our website: http://
