Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Special Open Door Forum: Study and Report on the Development of Home Health Payment Revisions to Ensure Access to Care, and Payment for Severity of Illness Thursday, March 31, 2011 - 1:00 p.m.-2:30 p.m. ET CMS needs your help identifying beneficiaries who may have difficulty accessing Medicare home health services. We would like to hear about your experiences serving hard to reach populations. Also, we would like you to describe challenges certain beneficiaries may experience in accessing Medicare home health services. This Special Open Door Forum will be dedicated to this very important issue and sharing your first hand experiences.
We hope that you will take advantage of this unique and valuable opportunity to help us better define and understand the low-income, underserved and/or high severity beneficiaries for whom the HH PPS may not accurately account and serve. For more information, please download: Home Health Study Literature Review http://www.cms.gov/HomeHealthPPS/Downloads/HHPPS_LiteratureReview.pdf Special Open Door Forum Informational Slides http://www.cms.gov/HomeHealthPPS/Downloads/HHPPS_StudyODF.pdf Special Open Door Forum Participation Instructions: This forum will be available as a streaming audio webcast over the Internet. To register to hear the call over the Internet, visit: http://www.cms.gov/apps/events/event.asp?id=634. A limited number of phone lines are available for people who wish to ask a question during the Forum, or have technical problems with the audio stream. You can call 1-800-837-1935 at any time after 12:45 p.m. ET and use Conference ID 51381075. You will be able to hear the Forum while you are on hold. Note: You can see live closed captioning from the Federal Relay Center at: http://www.fedrcc.us//Enter.aspx?EventID=1733209&CustomerID=321<http://www.fedrcc.us/Enter.aspx?EventID=1733209&CustomerID=321>. You must open a second tab or window and use Internet explorer with Flash enabled to access this service. Participants who use the Federal Relay Center, can download a transcript of the closed captioning. Visit: http://www.fedrcc.us/FedRcc/Default.aspx for more information. For phone users, TTY Communications Relay Services are available for the Hearing Impaired. For TTY services dial 7-1-1 or 1-800-855-2880 and a Relay Communications Assistant will help. An Encore audio recording of this call that can be accessed by dialing 1-800-642-1687 and using Conference ID: 51381075. This recording will be available approximately 2 hours after the conference and will be available for 10 days. An audio recording and transcript of this Special Forum will be posted to the Special Open Door Forum website at: http://www.cms.gov/OpenDoorForums/05_ODF_SpecialODF.asp and will be accessible for downloading beginning on or around April 15, 2011. For automatic emails of Open Door Forum schedule updates (E-Mailing list subscriptions) and to view Frequently Asked Questions please visit our website at http://www.cms.gov/opendoorforums/. Thank you for your interest in CMS Open Door Forums. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- March Flu Shot Reminder It's Not too Late to Give and Get the Flu Vaccine. Take advantage of each office visit and continue to protect your patients against the seasonal flu. Medicare will continue to pay for the seasonal flu vaccine and its administration for all Medicare beneficiaries through the entire flu season. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that patients, health care workers and caregivers be vaccinated against the seasonal flu. Protect your patients. Protect your family. Protect yourself. Get Your Flu Vaccine - Not the Flu. Remember - Influenza vaccine plus its administration are covered Part B benefits. Note that influenza vaccine is NOT a Part D covered drug. For information about Medicare's coverage of the influenza vaccine and its administration, as well as related educational resources for health care professionals and their staff, please visit the following CMS websites: http://www.cms.gov/MLNProducts/Downloads/Flu_Products.pdf and http://www.cms.gov/AdultImmunizations. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note: If you have problems accessing any hyperlink in this message, please copy and paste the URL into your Internet browser. If you know someone who would like to subscribe to a Medicare Fee-For-Service (FFS) provider listserv, go to (http://www.cms.gov/prospmedicarefeesvcpmtgen/downloads/Provider_Listservs.pdf). If you would like to unsubscribe from a specific provider listserv, please go to (https://list.nih.gov/cgi-bin/wa.exe?INDEX) to unsubscribe or to leave the appropriate listserv. Please DO NOT respond to this email. This email is a service of CMS and routed through an electronic mail server to communicate Medicare policy and operational changes and/or updates. Responses to this email are not routed to CMS personnel. Inquiries may be sent by going to (http://www.cms.gov/ContactCMS). Thank you.
