Hospice News

NOVEMBER 14, 2023

Canon Healthcare was a New Orleans-based hospice provider that also served the Baton Rouge and Covington, Louisiana, markets, as well as parts of Mississippi. Between 2013 and 2016, the company billed Medicare for $62 million and received $47 million in payments, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

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Hospice News

DECEMBER 12, 2023

Program integrity issues that have heated up in the hospice space during the past five years reached a boiling point in 2023. Hospice providers have seen an array of increased regulatory oversight in 2023. There is scrutiny on hospice care [that’s] setting the stage for the next phase of what hospice oversight looks like.

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Hospice News

APRIL 6, 2023

Two hospice fraud cases are moving forward in California and Arizona, states that some stakeholders consider to be potential hotbeds of malfeasance in the space. False Claims Act violations in California San Gabriel Hospice & Palliative Care submitted roughly $3.67 million in false and fraudulent claims to Medicare, of which $3.18

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Hospice News

AUGUST 14, 2023

Among those demos is the Medicare Care Choices Model (MCCM), which ran between 2016 and 2021. Community-based palliative care has the potential to improve end-of-life care and Medicare program costs.” Palliative care also decreased ED visits by 14% and inpatient admissions by 26% while boosting hospice enrollment by 29%.

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Hospice News

JULY 11, 2022

A group of 17 Illinois health care organizations is collaborating to expand access to home-based primary care, including a number of hospice and palliative care providers. million seniors who reside in Illinois are 85 or older, and 40% of Medicare beneficiaries in the state have four or more chronic conditions, according to HCCI.

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Hospice News

SEPTEMBER 2, 2022

Closing these gaps is a rising priority in payment model demonstrations by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI). The work being done at CMMI has a direct impact on hospice providers. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The center is a component of the U.S.

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Hospice News

DECEMBER 19, 2023

Residential Hospice has acquired Illinois-based Safe Haven Hospice from the senior living provider Christian Horizons for an undisclosed sum. More than 57,000 Illinois residents enrolled in hospice during 2021, a utilization rate of about 47%, according to the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

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Hospice News

MARCH 14, 2024

Hospices, in aggregate, are showing improvement on the quality measure for visits in the last days of life. In Calendar Year 2021, the share of hospice care days with nurse visits in the last seven days of life rose to 63%, up from 62% year over year, according to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO).

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Hospice News

APRIL 22, 2024

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) proposed rule designed to strengthen oversight of those institutions. Three such organizations currently have deeming authority for hospices, The Joint Commission, the Accreditation Commission for Health Care (ACHC) and Community Health Accreditation Partner (CHAP).

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Hospice News

MARCH 13, 2024

As hospice program integrity remains in the spotlight, California remains the only state to take action on curbing the problem. Beginning in 2021, numerous reports emerged of unethical or illegal practices among hundreds of newly licensed hospices, particularly among new companies popping up in California, Texas, Nevada and Arizona.

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Hospice News

SEPTEMBER 20, 2023

Guaranteed’s New SVP of Growth, Strategy Tech-enabled hospice startup Guaranteed has named Ryan Malone as its new senior vice president of growth and strategy. Previously, he was head of growth at Mavencare, and served in sales manager and director roles at Hometeam from 2013 to 2016. The funding follows a $6.5

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Hospice News

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

Medicare Advantage (MA) beneficiaries are more likely to enroll in hospice from a community setting than patients in traditional fee-for-service programs. million patients who elected hospice in the last 90 days of life during the years 2011, 2013, 2016 and 2018. This is close to half of all Medicare beneficiaries.

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Hospice News

NOVEMBER 16, 2022

NYSE: HCA) and the University of Central Florida (UCF) recently added a new graduate fellowship in hospice and palliative care medicine to their existing repertoire of training programs. Demand for culturally diverse hospice and palliative care in Florida is growing as minority aging populations swell. Utah held the highest rate at 60.5%

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Hospice News

JUNE 21, 2023

Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and 59 bipartisan co-sponsors have reintroduced legislation that would expand Medicare coverage of telehealth and make permanent flexibilities implemented during the COVID-19 public health emergency. Congress has extended hospices’ ability to do recertifications via telehealth through Dec. Ben Cardin (D-Md.),

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Hospice News

JULY 25, 2022

A federal court has sentenced Liana Karapetyan, former co-owner of California-based ANG Health Care, Excel Hospice, and Excel Home Healthcare, to 18 years in prison for hospice fraud and anti-kickback violations. Atoyan was co-owner of the hospice and home health businesses and has pled guilty for his role in the scheme. “In

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Hospice News

JULY 10, 2023

As health care stakeholders work to improve care coordination, more hospices are exploring home-based primary care. Organizations that are delivering hospice and palliative care now are looking to the future and wanting to provide more of a full-service solution for seriously ill patients,” Singleton told Hospice News.

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Hospice News

JUNE 27, 2022

Social and economic factors like these drive 40% of health outcomes, according to the Better Medicare Alliance. The interdisciplinary nature of palliative care, especially the inclusion of social workers, positions palliative care nicely to help to address the myriad needs that people have,” Maxwell told Hospice News.

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Hospice News

FEBRUARY 2, 2023

Given the critical role of family caregivers in home-based care, hospices have a vested interest in expanding their access to support. And while hospices offer social workers and spiritual care, many families continue to have unmet needs that could impede some patients’ access to hospice.

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Hospice News

SEPTEMBER 11, 2024

ACOs are groups of physicians, hospitals and other health care providers who come together voluntarily to give coordinated high-quality care to their Medicare patients. A 2016 study in the Journal of Palliative Medicine that showed organizations could save as much as $10,000 a month for patients who were getting in-home palliative care.

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Hospice News

SEPTEMBER 24, 2022

Careful management of hospice care manager workloads correlates with longer lengths of stay. For many patients length of stay is a week or less, which is too short for them to receive the full benefit of hospice care. Among the hospices that BerryDunn surveyed, 88% of the best performers kept case managers’ workloads between 13 to 18.

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Hospice News

AUGUST 24, 2023

Increased hospice oversight aimed at curbing fraud in the industry could come with a mixed bag of financial and operational impacts for providers. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has honed in on hospice program integrity, rolling out a swath of new measures to reduce fraud, waste and abuse in the space.

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Hospice News

JANUARY 12, 2023

A federal court has sentenced Akop Atoyan, former co-owner of three California home health and hospice agencies, to 25 months in prison for health care fraud and kickback schemes. He and his wife Liana Karapetyan owned ANG Health Care, Excel Hospice, and Excel Home Healthcare in the Sacramento area. Atoyan pled guilty to the changes.

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Hospice News

OCTOBER 4, 2022

The Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) is developing new reimbursement pathways for palliative care. As part of that process, CMMI is applying elements of its Medicare Care Choices Model (MCCM) demonstration, which ended Dec. MCCM was designed to test the impact of concurrent hospice and curative care.

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Hospice News

OCTOBER 4, 2022

has acquired Trio Home Health Care and Hospice, growing its reach in the Lone Star State, which is a key focus area for the company. This latest acquisition fills our quest to expand our geographic footprint within our primary service areas,” said Jet Health CEO Stace Bratcher in a statement shared with Hospice News.

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Hospice News

AUGUST 30, 2022

Michigan-headquartered Residential Hospice has acquired Comfort Hospice in Missouri and Grace Hospice in Ohio for undisclosed amounts. Residential purchased the two hospices from health care company U.S. Medical Management will retain its hospice locations outside of St. Hospice utilization in Missouri reached 50.2%

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Hospice News

DECEMBER 12, 2023

The report did not contain hospice-specific data. “In From 2016 through 2019, the average share was 17.5%. Spending by Medicare, hospice’s principal payer, accounted for 21% of the total national expenditures, hitting $944.3 Growth in Medicare spending also dropped to 5.9% billion in 2022. in 2022, down from 7.2%

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Hospice News

MAY 17, 2024

The court also ordered Akula to repay $42 million in fraudulent Medicare billing claims made between January 2013 and December 2019, which totaled roughly $84 million during that six-year span. The charges included fraudulent claims for physician services and home visits, as well as manipulation of Medicare billing codes.

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Hospice News

FEBRUARY 16, 2024

Hospice providers are increasingly focused on memory care settings and physician offices as referral sources. Though many hospices see facility-based care as their primary referral engines, a growing base of providers are seeking ties to community-based organizations to increase access and utilization this year.

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Hospice News

JUNE 27, 2024

The future outlook of hospice compliance is a mixed bag of uncertainty as program integrity oversight heats up alongside evolutions in telehealth regulation. Hospices today are facing one of the most challenging regulatory environments that the industry has seen, according to Pamela Duncan Owens, chief compliance officer of Agape Care.

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Hospice News

JANUARY 27, 2023

Hospices should be paying close attention to effective development and adherence to care plans when it comes to compliance in 2023. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has implemented significant changes to the hospice survey process effective Jan.

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Hospice News

APRIL 17, 2024

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) review and appeals process, according to CEO Greg Hagfors. The case has significance for hospice providers nationwide as CMS and its contractors continue to ramp up audits. OIG, on behalf of CMS, informed the hospice that it would be audited in a May 2018 letter.

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Hospice News

MARCH 23, 2023

On the patient side, Medicare beneficiaries face out-of-pocket costs when advance care planning is performed in any setting outside of an annual wellness visit. Across 150 different studies, white adults represented nearly two-thirds (65.1%) of roughly 800,000 individuals who had completed advance directives between 2011 and 2016.

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Hospice News

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

The health care system, in both private and public settings, that is engaged with financing, managing, and providing palliative and hospice care must directly address the issue of racism, discrimination, and disparities, particularly among marginalized underserved non-Hispanic Blacks,” authors stated in the study.

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Hospice News

JANUARY 16, 2023

Researchers analyzed records for 43,200 veterans with prior hospitalization who had received primary care at a VA site between October 2016 and September 2019. They found a 95% increase in hospice or palliative utilization among veterans served by VA providers participating in the agency’s Social Work Patient Aligned Care Team (PACT).

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Hospice News

DECEMBER 14, 2022

Winston & Strawn LLP acted as legal counsel to The Care Team, which provides home health and hospice in Michigan, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Texas and now Indiana. This marks the home health and hospice provider’s fourth acquisition since it became a portfolio company of private equity firm Revelstoke Capital Partners in 2019.

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Hospice News

AUGUST 17, 2022

Stretching back more than a decade, a rising number of states have passed laws designed to raise awareness of hospice and palliative care, but to date, few if any have achieved measurable results. Some states offer hospice- and palliative care-themed license plates or designate an official Hospice and Palliative Care Awareness Month.

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Hospice News

OCTOBER 13, 2022

Most of the things that have to happen from a technology and interoperability standpoint are well within our bounds and relatively easy to do,” Miller told Hospice News. Social and economic factors like these drive about 55% of individuals’ health outcomes, according to the Better Medicare Alliance. Case in point, the U.S.

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