Last October, Palmetto, one of the nation’s largest Medicare Administrative Contractors to the federal government, released their Electronic Comparative Billing Report (eCBR) for 2018 data between April 1 – September 30 that focused on hospice providers’ Non-Cancer Length of Stay (NCLOS) rates.

Last month, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) expanded the Targeted Probe and Educate (TPE) to include Hospice.

This agency faced a LUPA rate consistently more than 13%, which reflected room for improvement in patient care and in reimbursement. A nursing and therapy staff shortage combined with high patient volume made it difficult to achieve proper visit utilization.

The provider had more than $428,000 in aged receivables, 39% of which was aged over 360 days, and struggled to resolve the aged receivable before the timely filing deadline.