Summary Of Evidence

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Analysis of Evidence

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History/Background and/or General Information

Inpatient psychiatric hospitalization provides twenty four (24) hours of daily care in a structured, intensive, and secure setting for patients who cannot be safely and/or adequately managed at a lower level of care. This setting provides physician (MD/DO) supervision, twenty-four (24) hour nursing/treatment team evaluation and observation, diagnostic services, and psychotherapeutic and medical interventions.

Patients admitted to inpatient psychiatric hospitalization must be under the care of a physician. The physician must certify/recertify the need for inpatient psychiatric hospitalization. The patient must require “active treatment” of his/her psychiatric disorder. The patient or legal guardian must provide written informed consent for inpatient psychiatric hospitalization in accord with state law. If the patient is subject to involuntary or court-ordered commitment, the services must still meet the requirements for medical necessity in order to be covered.

Covered Indications

Admission Criteria (Intensity of Service):

The patient must require intensive, comprehensive, multifaceted treatment including 24 hours per day of medical supervision and coordination because of a mental disorder. The need for 24 hours of supervision may be due to the need for patient safety, psychiatric diagnostic evaluation, potential severe side effects of psychotropic medication associated with medical or psychiatric comorbidities, or evaluation of behaviors consistent with an acute psychiatric disorder for which a medical cause has not been ruled out.

The acute psychiatric condition being evaluated or treated by inpatient psychiatric hospitalization must require active treatment, including a combination of services such as intensive nursing and medical intervention, psychotherapy, occupational and activity therapy. Patients must require inpatient psychiatric hospitalization services at levels of intensity and frequency exceeding what may be rendered in an outpatient setting, including psychiatric partial hospitalization. There must be evidence of failure at, inability to benefit from, or unacceptable risk in an outpatient treatment setting.

For all symptom sets or diagnoses, the severity and acuity of symptoms and the likelihood of response to treatment, combined with the requirement for an intensive, 24-hour level of care, are the significant factors in determining the necessity of inpatient psychiatric treatment.

The following parameters are intended to describe the severity of illness and intensity of service that characterize a patient appropriate for inpatient psychiatric hospitalization. These criteria do not represent an all-inclusive list and are intended as guidelines.

Admission Criteria (Severity of Illness):

Examples of inpatient admission criteria include (but are not limited to):

• Threat to self, requiring 24-hour professional observation (i.e., suicidal ideation or gesture within 72 hours prior to admission, self mutilation (actual or threatened) within 72 hours prior to admission, chronic and continuing self destructive behavior (e.g., bulemic behaviors, substance abuse) that poses a significant and/or immediate threat to life, limb, or bodily function).
• Threat to others requiring 24-hour professional observation (i.e., assaultive behavior threatening others within 72 hours prior to admission, significant verbal threat to the safety of others within 72 hours prior to admission).
• Command hallucinations directing harm to self or others where there is the risk of the patient taking action on them.
• Acute disorder/bizarre behavior or psychomotor agitation or retardation that interferes with the activities of daily living (ADLs) so that the patient cannot function at a less intensive level of care during evaluation and treatment.
• Cognitive impairment (disorientation or memory loss) due to an acute Axis I disorder that endangers the welfare of the patient or others.
• A patient with a dementia disorder for evaluation or treatment of a psychiatric comorbidity (e.g., risk of suicide, violence, severe depression) warranting inpatient admission.
• A mental disorder causing major disability in social, interpersonal, occupational, and/or educational functioning that is leading to dangerous or life-threatening functioning, and that can only be addressed in an acute inpatient setting.
• A mental disorder that causes an inability to maintain adequate nutrition or self-care, and family/community support cannot provide reliable, essential care, so that the patient cannot function at a less intensive level of care during evaluation and treatment.
• Failure of outpatient psychiatric treatment so that the beneficiary requires 24-hour professional observation and care. Reasons for the failure of outpatient treatment may include increasing severity of psychiatric condition or symptom, noncompliance with medication regimen due to the severity of psychiatric symptoms, inadequate clinical response to psychotropic medications or severity of psychiatric symptoms that an outpatient psychiatric treatment program is not appropriate.

Active Treatment:

For services in a hospital to be designated as "active treatment," they must be:

• provided under an individualized treatment or diagnostic plan;
• reasonably expected to improve the patient's condition or for the purpose of diagnosis; and
• supervised and evaluated by a physician.

Such factors as diagnosis, length of hospitalization, and the degree of functional limitation, while useful as general indicators of the kind of care most likely being furnished in a given situation, are not controlling in deciding whether the care was active treatment. Please refer to 42 CFR 482.61 on “Conditions of Participation for Hospitals” for a full description of what constitutes active treatment.

The services must be provided in accordance with an individualized program of treatment or diagnosis developed by a physician in conjunction with staff members of appropriate other disciplines on the basis of a thorough evaluation of the patient's restorative needs and potentialities. Thus, an isolated service (e.g., a single session with a psychiatrist, or a routine laboratory test) not furnished under a planned program of therapy or diagnosis would not constitute active treatment, even though the service was therapeutic or diagnostic in nature. The plan of treatment must be recorded in the patient's medical record in accordance with 42 CFR 482.61 on “Conditions of Participation for Hospitals”.

The services must reasonably be expected to improve the patient's condition or must be for the purpose of diagnostic study. It is not necessary that a course of therapy have as its goal the restoration of the patient to a level which would permit discharge from the institution although the treatment must, at a minimum, be designed both to reduce or control the patient's psychotic or neurotic symptoms that necessitated hospitalization and improve the patient's level of functioning.

The types of services which meet the above requirements would include not only psychotherapy, drug therapy, and shock therapy, but also such adjunctive therapies as occupational therapy, recreational therapy, and milieu therapy, provided the adjunctive therapeutic services are expected to result in improvement (as defined above) in the patient's condition. If the only activities prescribed for the patient are primarily diversional in nature (i.e., to provide some social or recreational outlet for the patient, it would not be regarded as treatment to improve the patient's condition. In many large hospitals these adjunctive services are present and part of the life experience of every patient. In a case where milieu therapy (or one of the other adjunctive therapies) is involved, it is particularly important that this therapy be a planned program for the particular patient and not one where life in the hospital is designated as milieu therapy.

In accordance with the above definition of "improvement," the administration of antidepressant or tranquilizing drugs which are expected to significantly alleviate a patient's psychotic or neurotic symptoms would be termed active treatment (assuming that the other elements of the definition are met). However, the administration of a drug or drugs does not of itself necessarily constitute active treatment. Thus, the use of mild tranquilizers or sedatives solely for the purpose of relieving anxiety or insomnia would not constitute active treatment.

Physician participation in the services is an essential ingredient of active treatment. The services of qualified individuals other than physicians, e.g., social workers, occupational therapists, group therapists, attendants, etc., must be prescribed and directed by a physician to meet the specific needs of the individual. In short, the physician must serve as a source of information and guidance for all members of the therapeutic team who work directly with the patient in various roles. It is the responsibility of the physician to periodically evaluate the therapeutic program and determine the extent to which treatment goals are being realized and whether changes in direction or emphasis are needed. Such evaluation should be made on the basis of periodic consultations and conferences with therapists, reviews of the patient's medical record, and regularly scheduled patient interviews at least once a week. Interpretation of “at least once a week” means that the physician will evaluate the therapeutic program at least weekly, whereas it is generally the standard of practice that a physician sees the patient five to seven times a week during an acute care hospitalization.

The period of time covered by the physician's certification is referred to a "period of active treatment." This period should include all days on which inpatient psychiatric hospital services were provided because of the individual's need for active treatment (not just the days on which specific therapeutic or diagnostic services were rendered). For example, a patient's program of treatment may necessitate the discontinuance of therapy for a period of time or it may include a period of observation, either in preparation for or as a follow-up to therapy, while only maintenance or protective services are furnished. If such periods were essential to the overall treatment plan, they would be regarded as part of the period of “active treatment”.

The fact that a patient is under the supervision of a physician does not necessarily mean the patient is getting active treatment. For example, medical supervision of a patient may be necessary to assure the early detection of significant changes in his/her condition; however, in the absence of a specific program of therapy designed to effect improvement, a finding that the patient is receiving active treatment would be precluded.

The program's definition of active treatment does not automatically exclude from coverage services rendered to patients who have conditions that ordinarily result in progressive physical and/or mental deterioration. Although patients with such diagnosis will most commonly be receiving custodial care, they may also receive services which meet the program's definition of “active treatment” (e.g., where a patient with Alzheimer's disease or Pick's disease received services designed to alleviate the effects of paralysis, epileptic seizures, or some other neurological symptom, or where a patient in the terminal stages of any disease received life- supportive care). A period of hospitalization during which services of this kind were furnished would be regarded as a period of “active treatment”. 

Discharge Criteria (Intensity of Service):

Patients in inpatient psychiatric care may be discharged to a less intensive level of outpatient care. A less intensive level of service would be considered when patients no longer require 24-hour observation for safety, diagnostic evaluation, or treatment as described above. These patients would become outpatients, receiving either psychiatric partial hospitalization or individual outpatient mental health services, rendered and billed by appropriate providers.

Discharge Criteria (Severity of Illness):

Patients whose clinical condition improves or stabilizes, who no longer pose an impending threat to self or others, and who do not require 24-hour observation available in an inpatient psychiatric unit should be discharged to outpatient care. In addition, patients who are persistently unwilling or unable to participate in active treatment of their psychiatric condition, would also be appropriate for discharge.

Limitations

The following services do not represent medically reasonable and necessary inpatient psychiatric services and coverage is excluded under Title XVIII of the Social Security Act, Section 1862(a)(1)(A):

• Services which are primarily social, recreational or diversion activities, or custodial or respite care;
• Services attempting to maintain psychiatric wellness for the chronically mentally ill;
• Treatment of chronic conditions without acute exacerbation or the ability to improve functioning;
•  Vocational training; 
• Medical records that fail to document the required level of physician supervision and treatment planning process;
• Electrosleep therapy;
• Electrical Aversion Therapy for treatment of alcoholism (CMS IOM Publication 100-03, Chapter 1, Section 130.4);
• Hemodialysis for the treatment of schizophrenia (CMS IOM Publication 100-03, Chapter 1, Section 130.8);
• Transcendental Meditation (CMS IOM Publication 100-03, Chapter 1, Section 30.5);
• Multiple Electroconvulsive Therapy (MECT) (CMS IOM Publication 100-03, Chapter 1, Section 160.25).

It is not medically reasonable and necessary to provide inpatient psychiatric hospital services to the following types of patients, and coverage is excluded under Title XVIII of the Social Security Act, Section 1862(a)(1)(A):

• Patients who require primarily social, custodial, recreational, or respite care;
• Patients whose clinical acuity requires less than twenty-four (24) hours of supervised care per day;
• Patients who have met the criteria for discharge from inpatient hospitalization (i.e., patients waiting for placement in another facility);
• Patients whose symptoms are the result of a medical condition that requires a medical/surgical setting for appropriate treatment;
• Patients whose primary problem is a physical health problem without a concurrent major psychiatric episode. The treatable psychiatric symptoms/problem(s) must exceed any medical problems for the patient to be placed in an inpatient psychiatric unit;
• Patients with alcohol or substance abuse problems who do not have a combined need for "active treatment" and psychiatric care that can only be provided in the inpatient hospital setting. (CMS IOM Publication 100-03, Chapter 1, Section 130.1 and 130.6, respectively);
• Patients for whom admission to a psychiatric hospital is being used as an alternative to incarceration (i.e., court ordered admission not meeting medical necessity criteria);
• Patients admitted by a court order or whose admission is based on protocol and do not meet admission criteria (i.e., admissions based on hospital, legal, local, or state protocols do not preclude the patient from meeting the medical necessity for admission to an inpatient psychiatric hospital).

As published in the CMS IOM Publication 100-08, Medicare Program Integrity Manual, Chapter 13, Section 13.5.4, an item or service may be covered by a contractor LCD if it is reasonable and necessary under the Social Security Act Section 1862 (a)(1)(A). Contractors shall determine and describe the circumstances under which the item or service is considered reasonable and necessary.

Notice: Services performed for any given diagnosis must meet all of the indications and limitations stated in this LCD, the general requirements for medical necessity as stated in CMS payment policy manuals, any and all existing CMS national coverage determinations, and all Medicare payment rules.