NAHC One-Day Hospice Seminars:
Meeting the New Hospice CoPs: Will You Be Ready?

The Medicare Hospice Benefit Conditions of Participation (CoP) recently released by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will be effective December 2, 2008. Hospices must begin now to prepare for the transition to the new CoPs. NAHC will be having one-day seminars throughout the country in August and September.

This seminar will provide an in-depth review of the new CoPs. Attendees will receive valuable tools and resources essential to effective implementation of the new CoPs and can earn continuing education credits for attending (Nurses 6.0 CEs and Accountants 7.0 CPEs).

The session will include information about new patient’s rights, new requirements for initial and ongoing comprehensive patient assessments and new quality assessment and performance improvement requirements. The session will also provide attendees with information on the role of the hospice medical director, the new requirements for pharmaceutical management and the new regulations for caring for residents of SNFs/NFs.

Susan Bruno, LCSW, ACSW, The Hospice Institute of the Florida Suncoast, Clearwater, FL. The Hospice Institute of the Florida Suncoast provides practice-based expertise in hospice by utilizing the resources and training experiences gathered over the past 30 years of providing end-of-life care and consultation.

Ken Burgess, J.D., a long-term-care attorney with over 20 years' experience helping providers understand and implement federal Medicare regulations as well as a frequent national lecturer and author; and Mike Hale , an attorney, a registered nurse, former in-house counsel with the largest hospice provider in North Carolina and a former hospice administrator. Both are with the law firm of Poyner & Spruill, LLP, Raleigh, NC.

Janet E. Neigh, Vice President for Hospice, National Association for Home Care & Hospice, Washington, DC. She has spent the past 20 years working with Congress and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on hospice issues. Neigh led NAHC efforts to influence the final language of the new Hospice CoPs and managed the NAHC Hospice QAPI Collaborative Project initiated to help hospices meet new requirements in the revised Hospice CoP.