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The rules say that plans must pay for a medical service or item if regular Medicare would pay for it in this case. 
You can find this rule at 42 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Section 422.101. 
 
The rules say that providers/suppliers must report services correctly. Procedures should be reported with the 
Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code that describes the services performed. You can find this rule in 
the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Medicare National Correct Coding Initiative Policy Manual 
for Medicare Services, Chapter I(A). 
 
The rules say that certain data elements are required for home health services. Any claim with incomplete, 
missing, or invalid information for all of these elements may be returned as unprocessable. You can find this 
rule in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Internet Only Manual, Publication 100-04, Medicare 
Claims Processing Manual, Chapter 1, Section 80.3.1. 
 
The rules say that a case mix methodology adjusts the 30-day payment rate based on characteristics of the 
patient and his/her corresponding resource needs (e.g., diagnoses, functional impairment level, and other 
factors). The 30-day period payment rate is adjusted by a case-mix methodology based on information from 
home health claims, other Medicare claims, and data elements from the Outcome and Assessment Information 
Set (OASIS). The claims information and OASIS data elements are used to group 30-day periods of care into 
their case-mix groups. The home health agency receives a national, standardized 30-day payment of a 
predetermined rate for home health services unless CMS determines an intervening event warrants a new 30-
day period for purposes of payment. The partial payment adjustment is a proportion of the period payment and 
is based on the span of days including the start-of-care date (for example, the date of the first billable service) 
through and including the last billable service date under the original plan of care before the intervening event. 
You can find this rule in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Internet-Only Manual, 
Publication 100-02, Medicare Benefit Policy Manual, Chapter 7, Section 10.2 and 10.7. 
 
The rules say that for home health (HH) prospective payment system (PPS) periods of care, the distinct 5-
position, alphanumeric home health Health Insurance Prospective Payment System (HIPPS) codes are created as follows: 
 
1. The first position represents a combination of the referral source (community or institutional) and the period 
timing (early or late). 
2. The second and third positions represent the clinical and functional domains of the home health resource 
group (HHRG) coding system. 
3. The fourth position represents the co-morbidity category that applies to the patient. 
4. The fifth position is a placeholder for future use, required only because the field used to report HIPPS codes 
requires five positions. 
 
You can find this rule in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Internet-Only Manual, 
Publication 100-04, Medicare Claims Processing Manual, Chapter 10, Section 10.1.9. 
 
If you want to read these Medicare rules, you can go to this website www.medicareappeal.com. 
 
The Plan contract says that the Plan covers items and services in accordance with Medicare rules.