Physicians reluctant to embrace CPO
Posted by Claire Powell on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 @ 09:00 AM
Responses to a recent HHL survey on care-plan oversight suggest agency marketers find slightly more than half the physician practices they call on unreceptive to seeking CPO payment.
Staff physicians at Archbold Medical Center in Thomasville, Ga., "were happy to jump on the CPO bandwagon" several years ago after Archbold's home health unit, Archbold Health Services, began educating them about the reimbursement to be earned, says Carissa Hill, the agency's community services coordinator. But in time the burden of the 30-minute requirement has reduced CPO filers to only "a handful" while nearly all continue to seek certification/recertification payments, which doesn't have the same 30-minute requirement, Hill says.
One favorable sign in the survey responses is the suggestion that Part B carriers are rejecting CPO claims much less frequently than they once did.
- Burt Schorr bschorr [at] decisionhealth.com
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