Blog
Regulatory updates, survey readiness guides, and operational best practices — written for the people who keep Medicare-certified agencies compliant.
Learn exactly what to expect during a Medicare home health survey, from entrance conference through exit report. A compliance expert's guide to preparing your HHA for the surveyor visit.
How to build a QAPI program that drives real outcomes. Practical guidance on data collection, PIPs, and governing body involvement for Medicare-certified home health agencies.
Complete breakdown of Medicare CoP requirements for home health agencies. Understand what surveyors check and how to avoid common mistakes across every section of 42 CFR Part 484.
Medicare-certified home health agencies risk massive financial exposure when staff credentials expire. Learn the §484.115 and §484.80 requirements and how to prevent compliance failures.
Discover the top 10 Medicare home health survey deficiencies that put agencies at risk. Learn what surveyors look for and proven strategies to stay compliant.
771 new home health agencies have been certified since 2024. Most are building compliance from scratch. This guide covers what to prioritize in the first 60 days — policies, credential files, QAPI, incident tracking, and emergency preparedness — so you're ready when the surveyor arrives.
When a CMS surveyor asks for a document, they expect it in minutes. This guide covers how to structure a document vault that surveyors can navigate — folder structure mapped to the CoPs, naming conventions, version control, and expiration tracking.
CMS requires annual policy reviews by a qualified advisory group — not just re-dating documents. This guide covers what 42 CFR § 484.105 actually requires, what "reviewed" means in practice, and the most common gaps that lead to survey deficiencies.
QAPI is a Condition of Participation under 42 CFR § 484.65 — every Medicare-certified home health agency must have a functioning program. This guide breaks down the five elements CMS requires, what surveyors actually look for, and the most common gap that leads to citations.
Nearly one in four home health agencies have an active Plan of Correction right now. This guide covers what CMS requires under 42 CFR § 488.28, how to structure each response, the most common reasons PoCs get rejected, and how to build timelines that hold up during the follow-up survey.
More than one in four home health agencies face HHVBP payment penalties. This guide explains how your Total Performance Score is calculated under the 2026 scoring changes, what the penalty range looks like, and what small agencies can do to protect their revenue.
Home health staff credentials are one of the most frequently cited areas during Medicare surveys. This guide maps the credential requirements for every staff role, explains what CMS surveyors verify under 42 CFR § 484.80 and § 484.115, and identifies the gaps most agencies don't catch until it's too late.
45.5% of Medicare-certified home health agencies — 5,572 of them — are noncompliant per CMS records. The reason isn't bad clinical care. It's that most agencies can't produce the right evidence when surveyors ask for it. Here's a practical checklist of the six areas CMS surveyors focus on under 42 CFR Part 484, and the documentation that satisfies each one.