A community-based palliative care and hospice case manager works on a unique case that highlights the rewarding contributions she can make for patients and their families.
A case manager learns that a soon-to-be discharged patient’s electricity has been turned off for nonpayment and makes arrangements to have the bill paid and power restored. While this is clearly important to the patient’s health, it is also an example of how case managers may be unintentionally violating the law.
Interventions to reduce length of stay for high-risk, medically complex, and otherwise vulnerable patients are falling short, according to a technical brief prepared for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
In December 2020, CMS announced that it would begin a Review Choice Demonstration (RCD) for inpatient rehabilitation facility (IRF) services. The goal: to improve detection and identification of Medicare fraud related to these services.
CMS finalizing plans to remove the inpatient-only list, only to propose a reversal less than a year later, has introduced challenges for case managers.
