Hospice News

JANUARY 10, 2025

Susan Ponder-Stansel, CEO, Alivia Care A drive towards oversight and reform There will be continued pressure from the trade associations and Congress for [the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)] to design and implement effective reforms to address fraud and poor quality providers in the industry. Bartness, St.

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Hospice News

JUNE 1, 2022

Croix Hospice has acquired Lombard, Ill.-based based Lexington Hospice Care. In addition to a spate of acquisitions, the Minnesota-based hospice provider has launched three de novos thus far in 2022. This follows six new locations they opened in 2021 and seven during 2020. . Financial terms were undisclosed.

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Hospice News

AUGUST 17, 2023

As Jimmy Carter marks his sixth month in hospice care, the provider community is raising awareness by saluting the former president. The National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) convened a group of hospice leaders at Times Square in New York City to commemorate Carter’s hospice experience.

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Hospice News

APRIL 29, 2022

The Medicare Advantage hospice carve-in has been the focus of much attention among providers, and many are watching closely for the demonstration’s outcomes. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) launched the MCCM in 2016 to explore the idea of allowing hospice patients to receive concurrent curative care.

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Hospice News

JANUARY 25, 2024

National hospice utilization rates have fallen since 2020, though the total number of patients served remains consistent. This utilization rate is similar to what was seen in calendar year 2020. million Medicare beneficiaries were enrolled in hospice care for one day or more, compared to 1.72 About 47.3%

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Hospice News

MARCH 3, 2023

Nearly all hospices were nonprofit organizations at the time the Medicare benefit was established in 1982, but in terms of sheer numbers the balance has shifted toward for-profits in the intervening years. hospices between 2019 and 2020. Of those, about 73% were for-profit companies, and 24% were nonprofits.

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Hospice News

JULY 30, 2024

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has unveiled its final 2025 hospice rule, which includes a 2.9% The increase represents an estimated $790 million rise in total hospice payments compared to Fiscal Year (FY) 2024. The agency set a 5% cap on any year-over-year wage index decrease that hospices experience.

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Hospice News

JANUARY 3, 2023

It would have prohibited the establishment of for-profit hospices in New York state and forbid current for-profit operators from increasing capacity. . Data suggest that hospice care is underutilized in New York compared to other states, straining other elements of the health care system,” Hochul wrote in her veto.

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Hospice News

MAY 8, 2024

A bill currently before Congress would extend through 2026 regulatory flexibilities related to telehealth, including the ability to recertify patients for hospice care. If a hospice is undergoing a period of enhanced oversight by the U.S. It also includes some exceptions. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.)

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Hospice News

MARCH 29, 2023

“For a hospice administrator or executive, you really have to be very focused on your length of stay data,” Young told Hospice News in a recent Elevate podcast episode. Are you in an outlier scenario with your data that Medicare contractors are looking at? Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the U.S.

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Hospice News

MAY 1, 2023

Things improved in 2020, the most recent year for which data are available, but not enough to put them in the black. In its place, the organization made agreements with local hospitals to provide inpatient hospice care in their facilities. Meanwhile, Arkansas Hospice has fared better.

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Hospice News

SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

HCC scores are designed to predict the costs associated with a patient’s care. Patients with lower HCC scores often need hospice care for longer periods of time, though their care needs may be less intensive or complex. Dementia-related illnesses are the fastest growing primary terminal diagnosis among hospice patients.

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Hospice News

AUGUST 7, 2024

Among the significant changes coming this year is the end of the hospice component of the value-based insurance design (VBID) model, as of Dec. Commonly known as the “carve-in,” the program was designed to test hospice care coverage through Medicare Advantage, as well as some coverage of palliative care and transitional care.

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Hospice News

APRIL 22, 2022

Francis Reflections Lifestage Care recently opened a new inpatient hospice care center inside the Melbourne Regional Medical Center. A swelling demand for hospice in the community spurred the unit’s development. Francis Reflections Melbourne Care Center includes a private bathroom and overnight space for loved ones.

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Hospice News

DECEMBER 2, 2022

Starting with the headline, the story uses “hospice” as a monolithic term that makes little distinction among individual providers — heralding it overgeneralized and oversimplified perspective. Even when a hospice plays by the rules, death does not. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to “modernize” the benefit.

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Hospice News

NOVEMBER 3, 2023

As hospices prepare for Medicare Advantage, more nonprofits are finding that creating partnerships or entering affiliations will better position themselves for payer negotiations. Nonprofit hospice affiliations have surged in 2022 and 2023. The program also includes components designed to expand access to palliative care.

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Hospice News

FEBRUARY 2, 2024

Utilization continuous home care has dropped precipitously during the past decade, with labor pressures, regulatory scrutiny and billing challenges as contributing factors. Continuous home care (CHC) represented 0.9% of hospice care days during 2022, according to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO).

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Hospice News

SEPTEMBER 20, 2023

Experience with value-based care Value-based reimbursement is a rising tide, particularly for AccentCare’s diverse business lines. Medicare Advantage and Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) are making big inroads in the home health and palliative care markets, and hospice continues to inch in that direction.

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Hospice News

JULY 8, 2022

Among patients who received inpatient discharge instructions indicating hospice, nearly 1 in 10 did not enroll within 30 days of leaving the hospital, according to recent research from Trella Health. The company used data from the last quarter of 2020 and the third of 2021. This perspective is backed by other research.

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Hospice News

MARCH 14, 2024

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). Social worker visits in the last days of life also rose to 9% in 2021, up from 7% in 2020.

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Hospice News

JUNE 9, 2023

Increasingly, both policymakers and providers are seeing potential opportunities to reform the Medicare Hospice Benefit, including the prospect of concurrent care. Driving these conversations is the need to lighten the nation’s heavy health care spend, which in 2021 reached $4.3 told Hospice News. “If

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Hospice News

DECEMBER 13, 2024

This year saw regulatory evolutions spurred by program integrity concerns, as well as the introduction of landmark legislation, shifts in reimbursement trends and a change in presidential administration with unknown impacts across the care continuum. Defendants were charged with wire fraud, health care fraud and money laundering.

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Hospice News

JUNE 27, 2022

Many providers have expanded beyond the traditional business lines of hospice care to reap potential benefits in a value-based payment arena. Carefully navigating payer goals alongside staffing needs are important keys as providers diversify services beyond the hospice scope.

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Hospice News

FEBRUARY 17, 2023

Though operators often feel siloed within the Medicare Hospice Benefit, they are not shielded from the shifting currents in the health care system at large. Long-standing social stigma around mental health care is largely dissipating globally, according to a 2020 survey by the HealthPartners Institute.

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Hospice News

APRIL 23, 2024

We have evidence to show that early cancer palliative care interventions improve outcomes. On the research end of things, the International Neuropalliative Care Society (INPCS) was founded in 2020 to help address these challenges and to bring attention to the specialty.

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Hospice News

OCTOBER 24, 2023

Live discharges can occur for a number of reasons, including the patient or family changing their minds about receiving hospice care, or the patient improves and no longer needs those services. A patient may choose to resume curative treatment, or they might move out of the hospice’s service area. About 15.4% Of those, 5.7%

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Hospice News

OCTOBER 10, 2024

Cameron Muir has been named as the new CMO of the National Partnership for Healthcare and Hospice Innovation (NPHI). His new title signals the organization’s strategic plans to reshape hospice care delivery through patient-centered, innovative approaches, according to NPHI CEO Tom Koutsoumpas. “We

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Hospice News

MARCH 25, 2024

Arizona-based Stoneridge Hospice launched services in 2020 with an aim to address a swelling aging population’s growing need for end-of-life care. Stoneridge Hospice launched in 2020. My wife was a nurse in emergency medicine for several years, and my niece was a long-time hospice nurse.

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Hospice News

DECEMBER 4, 2023

Centers of Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), is contributing to the company’s optimism. VITAS is the nation’s largest provider of hospice care by market share, according to 2020 data from LexisNexis. For VITAS in particular, increases in clinical capacity has fostered steady growth during 2023.

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Hospice News

JUNE 16, 2022

Hospice provider Complete Oklahoma has acquired a license from Houston-based Avenir Hospice Care, establishing the company’s first foothold in Texas. Hospice utilization among Medicare decedents in Texas runs high, reaching 52.1% that year, according to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization.

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Hospice News

MARCH 7, 2023

“The stairs are steeper in UPIC audits, which I think are some of the most serious and costly audits for hospices to deal with,” Pekarske told Hospice News. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) contracts UPICs to investigate instances of suspected fraud, waste and abuse. Stakes around UPICs The U.S.

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Hospice News

JUNE 16, 2023

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) is seeking answers about hospice patients’ access to certain high-cost services. CMS included a series of requests for information (RFIs) in its proposed 2024 hospice payment rule. base rate increase for next year, which some in the hospice community have called inadequate.

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Hospice News

MAY 30, 2023

“The scholarship is a dependable way to assist hospice home care aids in furthering their careers, voicing their stories on the importance [of] what caregiving means to them and emphasize the changes that have occurred in their patients’ lives,” Winthorpe said in a statement. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

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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. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

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Hospice News

DECEMBER 15, 2022

The organization’s other affiliated hospice and palliative care brands include Chapters Health Palliative Care, Good Shepherd Hospice, Hospice of Okeechobee, HPH Hospice and LifePath Hospice. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) direct contracting program. Census Bureau.

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Hospice News

JULY 18, 2024

The federal government and the State of Tennessee first filed these complaints against Kindred in 2021 for claims submitted between 2010 and 2020. Gentiva’s parent company, the private equity firm Clayton, Dublier and Rice, acquired a 60% stake Kindred at Home’s hospice assets in 2022 for $2.8 million, with previous owner Humana Inc.

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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. The recently proposed 2024 hospice payment rule contained a 2.8% This includes items and services covered under Medicare Parts A, B, and D.

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