Medicare Patients Win the Right to Appeal Gap in Nursing Home Coverage
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Tag: observation status
The Jan. 25 ruling, which came in response to a 2011 class-action lawsuit eventually joined by 14 beneficiaries against the Department of Health and Human Services, will guarantee pClass-Action Lawsuit Seeks To Let Medicare Patients Appeal Gap in Nursing Home Coverage
By Susan Jaffe | Kaiser Health News | August 12, 2019 | This KHN story also ran on Salon and Next Avenue
Medicare paid for Betty Gordon’s knee replacement surgery in March, but the 72-year-old former high school teacher needed a nursing home stay and care at home to recover.
Yet Medicare wouldn’t pay for that. So Gordon is stuck with a $7,000 bill she can’t afford — and, as if that were not bad enough, she can’t appeal.
The reasons Medicare won’t pay have frustrated the Rhode Island woman and many others trapped in the maze of regulations surrounding something called “observation care.”
Patients, like Gordon, receive observation care in the hospital when their doctors think they are too sick to go home but not sick enough to be admitted. They stay overnight or longer, usually in regular hospital rooms, getting some of the same services and treatment (often for the same problems) as an admitted patient….
(Photo courtesy of Betty Gordon)
But observation care is considered an outpatient service under Medicare rules, like a doctor’s appointment or a lab test. Observation patients may have to pay a larger share of the hospital bill than if they were officially admitted to the hospital.Medicare’s nursing home benefit is available only to those admitted to the hospital for three consecutive days. Gordon spent three days in the hospital after her surgery, but because she was getting observation care, that time didn’t count.
There’s another twist: Patients might want to file an appeal, as they can with many other Medicare decisions. But that is not allowed if the dispute involves observation care.
Monday, a trial begins in federal court in Hartford, Conn., where patients who were denied Medicare’s nursing home benefit are hoping to force the government to eliminate that exception. A victory would clear the way for appeals from hundreds of thousands of people. [Continued at Kaiser Health News, Next Avenue or Salon]
…By Law, Hospitals Now Must Tell Medicare Patients When Care Is ‘Observation’ Only
By Susan Jaffe | KAISER HEALTH NEWS | March 13, 2017 |This story also ran in 
Under a new federal law, hospitals across the country must now alert Medicare patients when they are getting observation care and why they were not admitted — even if they stay in the hospital a few nights. For years, seniors often found out only when they got
Hospitals must complete this notice and give it to Medicare observation patients.
surprise bills for the services Medicare doesn’t cover for observation patients, including some drugs and expensive nursing home care.
The notice may cushion the shock but probably not settle the issue.
When patients are too sick to go home but not sick enough to be admitted, observation care gives doctors time to figure out what’s wrong. It is considered an outpatient service, like a doctor’s visit. Unless their care falls under a new Medicare bundled-payment category, observation patients pay a share of the cost of each test, treatment or other services. And if they need nursing home care to recover their strength, Medicare won’t pay for it because that coverage requires a prior hospital admission of at least three consecutive days.
Observation time doesn’t count.
“Letting you know would help, that’s for sure,” said Suzanne Mitchell, of Walnut Creek, Calif. When her 94-year-old husband fell and was taken to a hospital last September, she was told he would be admitted. It was only after seven days of hospitalization that she learned he had been an observation patient. He was due to leave the next day and enter a nursing home, which Medicare would not cover. She still doesn’t know why.
“If I had known [he was in observation care], I would have been on it like a tiger because I knew the consequences
This KHN article also ran in The Philadelphia Inquirer.
by then, and I would have done everything I could to insist that they change that outpatient/inpatient,” said Mitchell, a retired respiratory therapist. “I have never, to this day, been able to have anybody give me the written policy the hospital goes by to decide.” Her husband was hospitalized two more times and died in December. His nursing home sent a bill for nearly $7,000 that she has not yet paid. [Continued at Kaiser Health News and USA Today] …
You’re Being Observed In The Hospital? Patients With Private Insurance Better Off Than Seniors
By Susan Jaffe KAISER HEALTH NEWS | September 11, 2014 | This KHN story also ran in 
An increasing number of seniors who spend time in the hospital are surprised to learn that they were not “admitted” patients — even though they may have stayed overnight in a hospital bed and received treatment, diagnostic tests and drugs.
Because they were not considered sick enough to require admission but also were not healthy enough to go home, they were kept for observation care, a type of outpatient service. The distinction between inpatient status and outpatient status matters: Seniors must have three consecutive days as admitted patients to qualify for Medicare coverage for follow-up nursing home care, and no amount of observation time counts for that three-day tally. That leaves some observation patients with a tough choice: Pay the nursing home bill themselves — often tens of thousands of dollars – or go home without the care their doctor prescribed and recover as best they can.
But most observation patients with private health insurance don’t face such tough choices. Private insurance policies generally pay for nursing home coverage whether a patient had been admitted or not. Here’s a primer comparing how Medicare and private insurers handle observation care. [Continued in KHN] [Continued in Washington Post]…