New Web-based system offers hassle-free CPO payments
Posted by Claire Powell on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 @ 09:15 AM
New Web-based system offers hassle-free CPO payments
Physicians have a new incentive to claim CPO payments - and to refer to HHAs that help them.
It's a software program that lets them review plans of care and any suggested amendments on a dedicated Web site while also keeping a running total of the minutes physician users spend on them.
Called firstCPO, the software is an easy solution to the Medicare requirement that practitioners seeking CPO reimbursement do 30 minutes per month of related oversight work to be eligible, says Bobby Robertson, CEO for HEALTHCAREfirst, the Ozark, Mo.-based company that developed the program.
The reaction from the first physicians that have been introduced to this has been "very enthusiastic," says Teresa Henson, assistant administrator of Shepard's Crook Nursing Agency, a 275-patient HHA in Pampa, Texas, one of the first users of firstCPO.
The program will mean even more local physicians seeking CPO payments, she predicts.
Interim HealthCare added a similar CPO tracking option last year to the Web-based information system it operates for some last 320 company and franchise-owner locations [HHL 3/23/09].
firstCPO to become available to all
HEALTHCAREfirst has made this program available without charge to either the physicians that
refer to the vendor's approximately 400 HHA clients or to the client agencies themselves, Robertson says.
Starting this summer, however, the company expects to make the program available to all agencies. The charge for participating HHAs will be $2 to $3 per patient per month, though the service will continue to be free for doctors who use it, says CEO Robertson.