Field notes from fifteen years inside the chart.
Articles, video explainers, podcast episodes, and downloadable templates on hospice and home health compliance. Written by Irene, filtered through actual surveyor behavior.
The ten surveyor red flags you will see in your next full survey.
Every year we track what surveyors actually cite across CHAP, Joint Commission, and ACHC reviews. This year’s top ten, ranked by impact, with the specific evidence path each one requires and how to eliminate them before the surveyor lands.
Why “terminal prognosis” is a narrative problem, not a clinical one.
The gap between knowing a patient is terminal and writing a CTI that holds up in MAC review is 90% structure not clinical judgment. Here is the structure.
The five QAPI measures surveyors actually check (and the ones they don’t).
Most hospices design QAPI around activity. Surveyors audit for outcomes. The five measures worth tracking, and why the usual ten aren’t.
The 30-day survey-readiness plan (downloadable).
The exact cadence ILS CARE clients follow between survey cycles. One page, printable, CE-credit optional. Free for newsletter subscribers.
What a MAC reviewer sees when they open your CTI.
Guest: a former Medicare Administrative Contractor reviewer explains exactly what they look for, what triggers a denial, and how structure determines outcome.
HHVBP score lift without coding tricks.
Score improvement that survives a targeted review looks like documentation-habit change, not point-of-care optimization. Three habits that move the score.
The first ninety seconds of a surveyor visit.
What surveyors do the moment they walk in, what they’re looking for before the formal review starts, and how to not fail the first ninety seconds.
What the 2026 hospice CoP updates actually change.
The proposed rule is long. The operational impact is narrower than it reads. Five changes worth preparing for, and the five that sound big but aren’t.
Surveyor red-flag reference card.
A laminate-ready one-pager for the clinical leadership binder. The ten most-cited patterns with the fix in one sentence each.
Why your QAPI is “an activity log,” and what to do about it.
Guest: a DON who rebuilt her QAPI program from activity tracking to outcome measurement. What changed, what surprised her, and what she’d do differently.