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Hello everyone, welcome to our Monday Minute, the first one of 2022. We are very excited to be here today and want to touch on some very key points for Hospices. In regard to the VBID demonstration.

The VBID demonstration started, of course in 2021, and will continue in 2022 into phase two. With 2022 beginning there are going to be several Medicare Advantage Plans added to the VBID model as we discussed in a previous minute.

What I wanted to re-emphasize today for Hospices is that as you begin to admit patients in January and later, they have just come through open enrollment for Medicare, which means many of your patients may have now signed on to a Medicare Advantage Plan, where they may not have been in a Medicare Advantage Plan prior or the opposite. You need to make sure that you are very, very diligent about the Medicare verification eligibility verification of your patients to ensure exactly which program they are currently enrolled in.  I would be doing an eligibility verification on all patients that are Medicare eligible every week in the month of January and probably into February, just to ensure that you don’t miss anything.

With the VBID Model, do remember that if you have a patient enrolled in one of the participating plans in the VBID Model, you are required to submit a notice of election to both the Medicare Advantage Plan and Traditional Medicare. You are also required to submit the monthly claims for both to the Medicare Advantage Plan and to the Medicare MAC. Please, understand that even if this did not impact you in 2021, there are three times the number of Medicare Advantage Plans that are now enrolled in this VBID demonstration and that covers 22 states.

Also one last note, just because you are in a state that is not currently listed as a state with one of these active plans, if you have a patient that is enrolled in one of these plans, and one of the states that is currently impacted, and that patient moves to your state, you just became a participant. So you need to make sure you’re doing their eligibility verifications on every patient and making sure that you understand if they have a Medicare Advantage Plan, if it is indeed involved in the VBID demonstration, and you act accordingly.

Thank you all for participating today. Make sure that you stay tuned and to your state and national home Care and Hospice associations as they begin developing their annual educational opportunities through 2022 and that you don’t miss very important ones. Some of them coming up as quickly as in the month of January. Thank you so much and have a fabulous start to your 2022.

Be sure to check out our HPS Alliance recorded webinar Medicare Advantage VBID – Update on Medicare Advantage (MA) & Hospice Demonstration!