Certification Periods - Why Burden the Patient?
Posted by Mike Ferris on Saturday, November 15, 2008 and posted in HospiceWe hear it all the time: “Now here’s what will happen. Medicare has 90-day certification and recertification periods and so we’ll be reviewing your dad in our team meeting and the physician will sign the certification as long as he meets criteria.” Huh?
Why do we feel we have to go through this with patients and families at admission? Stop describing our internal process and instead focus on any impact on them. If you think about it, it would be like you going for a surgical consult and the surgeon describes the way his assistant submits your case to your insurer. Who cares??
What you should say. If they ask, tell them that they can be on hospice care for as long as their physician and Medicare say it’s okay. Otherwise, there’s no need to go into this garbled explanation when families are already exhausted and on information overload!
Remember that the only truly “iffy” cases are those involving diagnoses where longer-term stabilization may occur. So for those cases, tell the family that, “Sometimes patients stabilize to the point that they don’t need hospice for a period of time.
“In a lot of ways, that’s the good news. But we can always come back to help if the doctor feels your dad can once again benefit from hospice care.” Enough said!
