Hospice News

FEBRUARY 21, 2025

Hospice of the Chesapeake has launched a new disease-specific hospice program designed to better support patients with cardiac conditions. In 2020, heart disease took the lives of nearly 929,000 people nationwide. Patients must be hospice-eligible to participate. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported.

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Hospice News

OCTOBER 9, 2023

Calls have grown louder for an overhauled design of the Medicare Hospice Benefit, but the path towards change is riddled with contrasting views over regulation, policy and payment structures. One part of the issue is that hospice reimbursement has not kept pace with evolving patient needs, Grant said.

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Hospice News

JULY 14, 2022

Margin pressures from the proposed cuts to Medicare home health rates could impact palliative care and hospice. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in June released its proposed home health reimbursement rule for 2023, which included a 4.2% pay hike for hospice care in 2023. CMS proposed a 2.7%

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Hospice News

JANUARY 10, 2025

Long-time hospice leader Keith Everett will take the helm as CEO of ProCare Hospice in Nevada as the organizations previous leader, Dr. Clevis Parker, focuses on his role as chief medical officer. Parker has occupied both the CEO and CMO seats since 2020, leading the company through the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

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Hospice News

JUNE 28, 2023

Despite this potential, existing programs hit barriers created by misconceptions about palliative care among referring physicians, as well as health equity concerns, among others, according to an analysts of four payment model demonstrations carried out by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation.

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Hospice News

AUGUST 26, 2022

Medicare reimbursement is the lifeblood of hospice providers, and a clear understanding of policies like budget neutrality can help elucidate the payment systems that keep their businesses running. For example, CMS wouldn’t cut hospital payments to increase rates for hospices. These reductions occur within each service.

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Hospice News

DECEMBER 10, 2024

In advance care planning, the presumption is that it’s something that’s done only towards the end of life, but advance care planning is just the act of planning your care in advance, and we realize that that can be applicable to a lot of different scenarios, Koda Health CEO Tatiana Fofanova told Hospice News.

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Hospice News

APRIL 9, 2024

Reimbursement for community-based palliative care is gaining ground in the Medicare Advantage realm. Palliative care is among the wide range of supplemental benefits that exist within the Medicare Advantage payment landscape. This is a rise from 180 MA plans in 2023 offering palliative services and 64 MA plans in 2020.

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Hospice News

JULY 13, 2022

More than a dozen hospice advocacy groups have called on congressional leadership to intervene in a proposed 2.7% bump in Medicare payments, which they say is insufficient in light of COVID-19 and staffing headwinds. CMS in April released the 2023 proposed payment rule for hospice providers, including the 2.7%

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Hospice News

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

The hospice was accused of knowingly submitting Medicare claims for patients who were not terminally ill. Respectful and appropriate end-of-life care is the crux of the hospice benefit under Medicare, said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Justice Department. Attorney Keith A.

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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

NOVEMBER 7, 2023

Allowing patients to receive concurrent hospice and curative care reduces health care costs and improves quality. Initially slated to complete in 2020, CMS later extended it until December 2021. We really didn’t find subgroups that were not benefiting from the model,” Kranker told Hospice News. “We

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Hospice News

MARCH 3, 2023

The families of patients who received care from nonprofit hospices give their providers higher marks on quality than those who went with for-profits, a RAND Corp. These findings are particularly pressing given the striking growth of for-profit hospices, which have profit incentives that have been shown to affect how they care for patients.”

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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

JUNE 3, 2022

The Medicare Part A trust fund is still on track to run short of money before the decade is out, but not as quickly as previously anticipated. By 2028, Medicare would have sufficient dollars to cover 90% of Medicare expenses. Hospice expenditures in particular are expected to increase to more than $48.2 population.” ?

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Hospice News

NOVEMBER 10, 2023

Texas-based Choice Health at Home LLC has inked a deal to acquire Lumicare Hospice, growing its presence in two current markets while establishing services in a new state. Lumicare Hospice has locations in Texas and Arizona, two states in Choice’s existing service region. Hospice utilization in the state reached 50.4%

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Hospice News

MAY 9, 2024

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on continuing evidence of hospice fraud and quality issues. We must urgently address the bad actors who are abusing the hospice benefit and harming patients and families,” the legislators wrote in the letter. Members of Congress are demanding answers from the U.S.

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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 finalized hospice cap amount for FY 2025 is $34,465.34, up from $33,494.01

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Hospice News

MAY 8, 2024

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) should beef up hospice oversight, including addressing overdue surveys. To date, CMS has fully implemented five and partially implemented three of eight provisions of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (CAA), though quality issues persist in the hospice space.

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Hospice News

JANUARY 3, 2023

Kathy Hochul (D) has vetoed legislation that would have effectively banned new, for-profit hospices in the state. It would have prohibited the establishment of for-profit hospices in New York state and forbid current for-profit operators from increasing capacity. . Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

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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). seen in 2020, with the slowdown largely attributed to reduced spending on COVID-19 support, including Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans and the Provider Relief Fund (PRF). “The to reach $4.3

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Hospice News

AUGUST 7, 2024

Hospice reimbursement trends influence palliative care payment and delivery. 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. The North Carolina-based hospice, home health and palliative care provider is part of the Liberty Health system. “The

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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 provides home-based hospice and also contracts with other providers to offer facility-based services. Stoneridge Hospice launched in 2020.

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Hospice News

MAY 16, 2022

CVS Health Corporation (NYSE: CVS) subsidiary Aetna has selected Ohio’s Hospice and Pure Healthcare as part of the insurance company’s hospice and palliative care preferred provider network for Value-Based Insurance Design (VBID) in the Buckeye State. The collaborative began with three hospice members and now includes 11 organizations.

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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. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently extended the program to 2030.

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Hospice News

MAY 16, 2022

To successfully negotiate value-based contracts, hospices will need to educate payers about the value of palliative care, according to J. chief innovation officer of the National Partnership for Healthcare and Hospice Innovation (NPHI). Palliative care made its first strides into the value-based care arena in 2020 when the U.S.

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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

DECEMBER 8, 2023

The durable medical equipment (DME) provider National HME has acquired Hospice Source, also a DME company. The Texas-based company developed its Hospice Cloud Pro technology platform to facilitate consolidated equipment ordering and provide clients with data on utilization, cost trends, and network management for reporting and analytics. “We

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Hospice News

MAY 1, 2023

On June 1, LifeTouch Hospice will merge with Arkansas Hospice. Both hospices are owned and operated by the SHARE Foundation, a nonprofit, faith-based organization. The hospice last year served 430 patients in a five-county region of Arkansas. Meanwhile, Arkansas Hospice has fared better.

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Hospice News

DECEMBER 2, 2022

The recent article by the New Yorker and ProPublica that branded “hospice” as a profiteering “hustle” was an outrageous misrepresentation of the provider community. The article begins with a rehash of the AseraCare False Claims Act (FCA) and anti-kickback lawsuit which was filed in 2008 and settled in March of 2020.

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Hospice News

MARCH 8, 2024

Tightened regulation in the hospice space has led to longer, more stringent diligence processes when it comes to buying and selling provider companies. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has honed in on hospice program integrity through a number of new regulations, including some in the agency’s 2024 hospice final rule.

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Hospice News

DECEMBER 12, 2022

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) is poised to recommend that the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reduce the aggregate cap for hospice payments by 20% in 2024. During 2020, about 18.6% of hospices exceeded the cap, MedPAC estimated. In 2015, the commission reported that 12.5%

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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

MARCH 29, 2023

Though evidence shows that longer hospice stays reduce costs, providers are still walking a regulatory tightrope. On one hand, longer hospice stays can lead to improved patient and family satisfaction and greater cost saving opportunities. Are you in an outlier scenario with your data that Medicare contractors are looking at?

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Hospice News

MARCH 8, 2023

High valuations have led Addus HomeCare (NASDAQ: ADUS) to pivot towards personal care and home health deals rather than hospice acquisitions. Hospice multiples broke records in 2020, 2021 and 2022, reaching as high as 29x. Hospice is still very expensive. Combined, home health and hospice account for the remaining 25%.

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Hospice News

DECEMBER 8, 2023

Hospice providers will be looking to Congress in 2024 to address issues related to program integrity, quality improvement and industry-wide workforce pressures. As legislative efforts develop, hospices may want to focus their attention on a few key legislators. We don’t have confidence in the algorithm that they proposed.

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