Hospice News

MARCH 4, 2024

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will end the hospice component of the value-based insurance design model (VBID) as of Dec. Often called the “hospice carve-in,” the program was designed to test coverage of hospice care through Medicare Advantage, in addition to some coverage of palliative care and transitional care.

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Hospice News

MARCH 3, 2023

RAND researchers analyzed Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) Survey data from 653,208 caregivers whose family members received care from 3,107 hospices between April 2017 and March 2019. hospices between 2019 and 2020. Of those, about 73% were for-profit companies, and 24% were nonprofits.

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Hospice News

DECEMBER 23, 2024

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has made public its first cohort for the hospice Special Focus Program (SFP). Congress included the language in response to July 2019 reports on hospice quality from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). million annually.

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Hospice News

NOVEMBER 21, 2024

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) could produce misinformation that could interfere with access to care. This was in response to July 2019 reports on hospice quality from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) in the U.S. The soon-to-be-implemented hospice Special Focus Program (SFP) from the U.S.

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Hospice News

JUNE 3, 2024

The researchers examined Medicare claims data of beneficiaries 65 and older with recent cancer diagnoses who were given a six-month life expectancy prognosis between 2010 and 2019. Despite considerable growth in early PC receipt, utilization remained low in 2019,” the researchers wrote in the study.

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Hospice News

SEPTEMBER 13, 2023

During the past decade, Medicare beneficiaries with dementia who utilized hospice had lower overall health care costs than those who did not, according to the Health Affairs study. are increasingly concerned that greater use of the Medicare hospice benefit by people with dementia is driving up costs,” researchers wrote in the study.

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Hospice News

OCTOBER 10, 2024

Two individuals in California have been arrested for their roles in a $54 million scheme to defraud Medicare for hospice and diagnostic testing. From March 2019 to August 2024, these companies allegedly submitted more than $54 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare for services that were never provided and not needed.

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Hospice News

NOVEMBER 1, 2023

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has finalized its 2024 home health rule, including the implementation of a hospice Special Focus Program (SFP). The final rule forbids any change in majority ownership during the 36 months after initial Medicare enrollment, including acquisitions, stock transactions or mergers.

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Hospice News

NOVEMBER 27, 2024

The first was two July 2019 reports on hospice quality from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) in the U.S. Investigations have shown that potentially hundreds of newly licensed hospices have bilked Medicare of millions of dollars during the past several years, all while providing egregiously poor care or none at all.

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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

JULY 26, 2024

A hospice physician in California is facing up to a decade in prison after pleading guilty for their involvement in a kickback fraud scheme that bilked Medicare of nearly $30 million. Contreras defrauded Medicare of nearly $4 million in false and fraudulent hospice claims from July 2016 to February 2019, according to the plea agreement.

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Hospice News

DECEMBER 12, 2024

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has not responded to congressional concerns about the hospice Special Focus Program (SFP). The SFP program was developed in response to July 2019 reports on hospice quality from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

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Hospice News

MAY 8, 2024

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), they would not be able to recertify via telehealth. Also, clinicians who are not enrolled in Medicare or who validly opted out would likewise be prohibited. Researchers conducted 88 concurrent in-person and telehealth visits between June and November 2019.

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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. Home-based palliative care could reduce societal health care costs by $103 billion within the next 20 years, the nonprofit economic research group Florida TaxWatch indicated in a 2019 report. Case in point, the U.S.

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Hospice News

MARCH 24, 2023

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) decision to extend the value-based insurance design (VBID) model through 2030: patients’ social needs, health equity and improved care coordination. This includes the hospice benefit component, often called the Medicare Advantage carve-in, CMS confirmed.

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Hospice News

FEBRUARY 26, 2024

million Medicare decedents who died in 2019. Nearly half (43%) of the more than 2 million Medicare decedents included in the research were diagnosed with dementia during their lifetime. million Medicare decedents who utilized hospice in 2019, about 591,272 had dementia, the research found. utilized hospice.

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Hospice News

JULY 3, 2023

Rosen and Murkowski, initially tried to pass the palliative care training bill in 2019, and then again 2021. The Improving Access to Transfusion Care for Hospice Patients Act would create a payment model for blood transfusion services within the Medicare Hospice Benefit. This is not the bill’s first iteration.

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Hospice News

FEBRUARY 20, 2024

These results appeared in a 2019 New England Journal of Medicine study titled “Rehabbed to Death.” Even more so, specific Medicare and Medicaid policies perpetuate this cycle. After exhausting her Medicare benefits, she depleted her assets and paid out of pocket until qualifying for Medicaid.

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Hospice News

DECEMBER 14, 2022

trillion in 2021, according to a new analysis from the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). share in 2019. Medicare spending, for example, accounted for 21% of total national health care expenditures and reached $900.8 in 2020, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.

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Hospice News

DECEMBER 2, 2022

When the Medicare Hospice Benefit became a permanent program in 1982, its parameters were designed specifically for cancer patients. of hospice enrollees in 2019, up from 9% in 2002, according to NHPCO. The average length of stay for those patients reached 126 days in 2019, compared to 92.6 NYSE: CHE), told Hospice News in 2019.

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Hospice News

OCTOBER 4, 2022

Only 10 new Medicare Advantage (MA) plans will offer home-based palliative care as a primarily health-related benefit for 2023, but payers may be offering those services through other programs. Among Medicare Advantage supplemental benefits, in-home support services and caregiver support saw the most year-over-year growth for 2023.

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Hospice News

AUGUST 8, 2022

As the hospice community takes its first steps into value-based reimbursement, stakeholders have an opportunity to re-examine elements of the Medicare Hospice Benefit that may be outdated, according to some providers. The hospice benefit became a formal part of Medicare in 1983. Initially, the U.S.

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Hospice News

DECEMBER 12, 2023

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% Economic patterns also reflect the growing presence of Medicare Advantage. billion in 2022.

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Hospice News

DECEMBER 8, 2023

Lawmakers have an essential role in ensuring the viability of the Medicare Hospice Benefit, according to Davis Baird, director for government affairs for hospice at the National Association for Home Care and Hospice (NAHC). So, having those conversations about what those improvements would be is going to be an important exercise in 2024.”

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Hospice News

SEPTEMBER 6, 2023

Only 7% of community-based palliative care programs are operated by home health organizations, compared to about 50% for hospices and 7%, according to 2019 data from the Center to Advance Palliative Care. Currently, the palliative care space is dominated by hospices and health systems.

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Hospice News

JUNE 8, 2023

senators have introduced a bipartisan bill that would direct the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) to develop a palliative care-specific payment model demonstration. Additionally, some Medicare Advantage plans offer palliative care as a supplemental benefit. The bill’s sponsors include Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.),

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Hospice News

OCTOBER 2, 2023

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has been gradually implementing changes to the hospice survey process and enforcement remedies, including civil monetary penalties in some instances. These actions were designed to strengthen regulatory oversight of providers in the wake of two July 2019 reports from the U.S.

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Hospice News

FEBRUARY 9, 2023

The Medicare Hospice Benefit initially was designed around the needs of cancer patients, but now the number of patients with other diagnoses is growing — some with less predictable disease patterns. of hospice enrollees in 2019, up from 9% in 2002, according to the National Hospice & Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO).

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Hospice News

AUGUST 18, 2022

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has reiterated that the agency will not allow hospices to recertify patients after the COVID-19 public health emergency expires. . Face-to-face encounters for purposes of patient recertification for the Medicare hospice benefit can now be conducted via telehealth (i.e.,

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Hospice News

APRIL 18, 2024

million beneficiaries with continuous enrollment in traditional Medicare who received care across 576 health systems between 2019 and 2021–2022. A recent Health Affairs study has dug into the quality and cost impacts of telehealth utilization during the pandemic. Researchers examined more than 5.5

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AlayaCare

NOVEMBER 5, 2018

Many of these issues are ongoing and will continue to affect the landscape into 2019 and beyond. Integration of Clinical Care with Personal Care A second trend for 2019 is the growing realization that, to improve patient outcomes, personal care is often as important as clinical care. In the U.S., This trend is taking a few forms.

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Hospice News

JULY 21, 2023

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) contracts with RACs to conduct post-payment reviews designed to recover any funds that may have been overspent. Medicare hospice expenditures rise by about $1 billion annually, according to CMS. In 2019, RAC audits led to total corrected underpayments in excess of $18.3

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Hospice News

APRIL 7, 2023

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is seeking answers from the hospice community — including some around utilization patterns and non-hospice spending. This includes items and services covered under Medicare Parts A, B, and D. bump from FY 2019. Between 2010 and 2019 Medicare paid a total of $6.6

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Hospice News

DECEMBER 21, 2023

Formerly known as Catskills Area Hospice and Palliative Care, the organization rebranded as Helios in 2019. In 2021, 48,644 Medicare beneficiaries in New York state elected the hospice benefit, according to the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

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Hospice News

NOVEMBER 8, 2024

Private equity transactions represented half of all home health and hospice deals in 2018 and 2019, resulting in a 300% increase in patients enrolled under PE-backed providers, according to research published in the Journal of Palliative Medicine. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Care Compare site.

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Hospice News

JULY 16, 2024

Roughly 73,963 Medicare decedents utilized hospice in Pennsylvania in 2021, which falls in the middle in utilization among the states, according to the U.S. Centers for Medicare & medicaid Services (CMS). Hospice utilization ran highest in California and Florida that year at 156,000 and 154,521 decedents, respectively.

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Hospice News

DECEMBER 12, 2023

The patient safety concerns bubbled up in 2019 with two reports from the U.S. Many established services for the purpose of selling the license at a profit or defrauding Medicare. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has rolled out a swath of new measures to reduce fraud, waste and abuse in the space.

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