Thursday, December 16, 2010

Question 2: Medicare home health patient who drives

Determining homebound status is not as easy as it seems. This is in part to CMS's broad and non-specific definition. Most people within the homecare industry can recite that Medicare homecare patients have to have the condition "that there exists a normal inability to leave home and, consequently, leaving home would require a considerable and taxing effort." After this, there is definite discrepancy in what this exactly means.

As far as driving, this fact does not automatically exclude a patient from home health services. CMS answered a Q&A in 2008 to this effect. The bigger picture has to be looked at.

Question 2 does not indicate if there is a considerable and taxing effort to leave the home thus the correct answer would be not enough information to make a decision.