Understanding Medicare: The Observation Status Glitch
The federal government recently addressed a very expensive glitch in the systematic treatment of patients in hospitals throughout the country, which mandates that hospitals provide notice as to a patient’s observation status.
As we discussed in our blog post on May 31, 2013, “Status Does Matter: Observation v. Admission”, there is a big problem that many Medicare recipients have been facing: patients are footing the bill. The problem is that patients are footing the bill for rehabilitation services in a skilled nursing facility when they are under the impression that these services are covered by Medicare. At the heart of the problem is that the hospital never actually admitted the patient, and coded them with a status of “under observation.”