Hospice News

MARCH 21, 2024

Members of Congress are raising questions about the continued Medicare certification for new hospices in areas rife with fraud. Some of these providers engaged in referral kickback schemes, enrolled patients who were not eligible for hospice and lied to them about being terminally ill. Michelle Steel (R-Calif.)

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Hospice News

SEPTEMBER 17, 2024

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has released its first draft guidance manual for implementing the Hospice Outcomes and Patient Evaluation (HOPE) tool. The tool is slated for an October 2025 implementation, according to the agency’s 2025 final hospice rule.

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Hospice News

JANUARY 19, 2023

Four national hospice and senior care industry groups have called on Congress and the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to make regulatory and legislative changes to instill stronger program integrity safeguards. Ensuring program integrity is essential to enabling good hospice care.

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Hospice News

APRIL 18, 2023

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is insufficient to support hospice patients’ care needs, a major industry group said. CMS earlier this month released its 2024 hospice proposed rule , which included the 2.8% Hospice Payment Hike Insufficient appeared first on Hospice News.

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Hospice News

JUNE 21, 2024

Bristol Hospice has acquired Mississippi-based Mid-Delta Hospice, a move that marked its entry into the state. The decision to launch services in a new state came with growing recognition around rising demand for home health and hospice care, according to Bristol Hospice CEO and President Alex Mauricio.

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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

MAY 7, 2024

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. Thus far, California is the only state to take action on the issue, including a moratorium on hospice licensing.

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Hospice News

APRIL 26, 2023

. “Our new Manhattan branch will headquarter more local staff within the communities they are already serving, allowing us to increase access and convenience to hospice care where there is great need.” A little more than 31,000 Medicare patients in Kansas elected hospice in 2021, according to the U.S.

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Hospice News

JULY 15, 2022

The return of sequestration is adding to the financial storms brewing in hospice, as providers contend with rising costs of delivering patient care, inflation and lackluster reimbursement. After a moratorium during the pandemic, Medicare sequestration resumed July 1. It included a 2.7% per diem rate increase.

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Hospice News

APRIL 12, 2023

Data is more crucial to hospice businesses than ever before when it comes to payer and referral partner contracting, compliance and building their census. The nitty gritty details of data management matter when it comes to ensuring both a healthy bottom line and quality patient care.

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Hospice News

SEPTEMBER 22, 2023

A large contingent of these companies were established with the purpose of selling the license at a profit, with little concern for patient care. In some instances, multiple hospices have been operating out of the same address without a corresponding increase in the population of eligible patients. This prompted the U.S.

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Hospice News

JUNE 22, 2023

SEIU analyzed Medicare claims data showing that the average hospice transfer rate among HCA hospital discharges was nearly 40% above the national average in 2021 and represented a 50% growth rate over four years. For one, hospice utilization has been on a steady upswing nationally for several years. told Hospice News.

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Hospice News

FEBRUARY 13, 2023

“We have been serving the state of Wisconsin for many years, continuing our long tradition of exceptional patient care,” St. Croix Hospice CEO Heath Bartness said in a press release. “That reputation of excellence leads more patients, families and facilities to seek our services.”

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Hospice News

MARCH 1, 2024

Frontpoint, a portfolio company of Cimarron Healthcare Capital and Tacoma Holdings, is an emerging provider of home health, hospice, palliative and personal care with a focus on Medicare Advantage enrollees in Texas markets. Post-transaction, Frontpoint’s service area will reach more than 176 Texas counties.

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Hospice News

AUGUST 25, 2022

Despite slowed intensity thus far in 2022 compared to previous years, the hospice sector has “remained active” and “still outpaces” other markets in health care, according to a recent report from Bass Berry & Sims. Regulators have kept a close watch on hospice deals as merger and acquisition activity swells in the space.

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Hospice News

AUGUST 8, 2023

Hospices seeking to gauge the potential impact of new regulatory actions in the space can look to their counterparts in the home health field. CMS is no doubt hoping for similar results for the Medicare Hospice Benefit. In that time frame, Nevada saw 56 newly certified hospices, and 369 emerged in Texas.

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Hospice News

NOVEMBER 30, 2022

Concern is mounting around whether current health equity initiatives will be a flash in the pan or yield long term improvement on reducing disparities in hospice care among communities of color. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Effective Jan.

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Hospice News

JUNE 27, 2023

As more hospices engage with Medicare Advantage (MA) plans, they may be able to learn from the experiences of some home health providers. Historically, MA has not covered hospice. This meant lower reimbursement, as MA plans often negotiate for payments that are lower than those in traditional Medicare.

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Hospice News

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

California is among the states that have become hotbeds for fraud, including a swath of providers that were starting hospices just to flip the licenses. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) 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

MARCH 14, 2024

The number of registered nurse and social worker visits during a patient’s final week is one of the seven quality measures that CMS uses to evaluate providers. Patients may be receiving several visits from these professionals during the last days of life, or multiple visits on the same day, that do not count toward the measure, she said.

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Hospice News

APRIL 23, 2024

The INPCS has made an Education in Palliative and End-of-Life Care Neurology (EPEC-N) curriculum freely available on its website for anyone who wishes to access it, from providers to patients to family members. Medicare covers most expenses related to palliative care, but as with other health care services, reimbursement remains low.

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Hospice News

MAY 8, 2023

The company has about a dozen different insurance companies in its payer mix, in addition to Medicare and Medicaid. “We It’s not the same as home health and hospice. On a Part A benefit, you’re getting that benefit from Medicare, so you want to have like 80/20 Medicare versus private payers.

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Hospice News

SEPTEMBER 2, 2022

Understanding payer priorities in defining the scope of quality is vital for hospices to thrive not only in traditional Medicare, but also in today’s value-based reimbursement climate. The nitty gritty details of data tracking and management matter when it comes to ensuring both a healthy bottom line and quality patient care.

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Hospice News

JULY 17, 2022

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to remain intact, such as 1135 waivers of certain hospice rules. CMS also temporarily waived the requirement for volunteers to provide a minimum of 5% of hospice patient care hours. But the telehealth waivers are top of mind for most hospice providers.

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Hospice News

JULY 20, 2023

Agencies that “do the best job” in the value-based landscape are those that include clinical capacity around patient care and related operational expenses in their cost delivery structures, Calcutt indicated. Two types of data are particularly crucial, the total cost of care and patient outcomes, he added.

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Hospice News

OCTOBER 5, 2022

Hospice utilization in Indiana reached 48.9% among Medicare decedents in 2018, according to the National Hospice & Palliative Care Organization. Croix Hospice’s growth is showing no signs of slowing down. We found a culture in the team at Adaptive that was aligned with ours,” Phenneger told Hospice News.

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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

JUNE 4, 2024

The mechanics vary but the end result is the same: hospices getting paid for services they either did not provide, provided at a substandard level or had no authority to provide at all. Therefore, hospice providers must better prepare for audits and oversight. This can be a challenge, especially when it comes to documentation.

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Hospice News

SEPTEMBER 16, 2022

Despite rising demand for their services, many hospices are seeing their margins nibbled away by inflation, fuel expenses and labor and supply costs. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) raised hospice per diems by 3.8% Some in the space have voiced concern that reimbursement has not kept pace with the headwinds.

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Hospice News

JANUARY 20, 2023

In 2021 the company added hospice and palliative care services in its eastern Idaho market when it gained Medicare certification and accreditation from the Accreditation Commission for Health Care (ACHC). Established in 1977, CHHH has an average daily census of 600 patients.

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Hospice News

SEPTEMBER 5, 2023

Middlemen in any industry should be adding value, and that value should be measured in health care through the lens of whether it actually improves patient care, full stop.” Jain recently wrote about the influence of health care middleware companies in a column in Forbes. Look at this hospice palliative continuum.

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Hospice News

MARCH 22, 2024

Hospice providers need to evolve with their changing patient populations and the larger health care system, according to Greg Hagfors, CEO of Partners In Care. A group of volunteers had brought the hospice concept from the United Kingdom to Oregon, according to Hagfors.

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Hospice News

JULY 28, 2022

NYSE: CHEM), recently launched a targeted hiring and retention wellness initiative designed to ease workforce strains and increase capacity for patient care, paving the way for sustainable long-term growth. VITAS Healthcare, a subsidiary of Chemed Corp.

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Hospice News

APRIL 19, 2023

Staff at the new office provide 24/7 services to help facilitate hospice admissions for hospital and physician referrals and facility-based patients. The hospice provider also offers pet and music therapy, as well as bereavement support services. This is another level of care that we can provide,” Sade Bello told local news.

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Hospice News

JANUARY 2, 2023

Roughly 78% of hospice and palliative care providers around the globe indicated “less or much less” use of volunteers since the pandemic’s onset, according to a 2022 study in the International Journal of Health Policy and Management. Historically, about 10% of the hospice’s volunteers who visit patients are pre-med students.

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Hospice News

JULY 14, 2022

A petition was signed urging UPMC to keep the facility open with a reduced number of patient beds. Hospice utilization among Medicare decedents in Pennsylvania reached 48.4% during 2018, according to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. Though this fell slightly under the national average of 50.3%

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Shining Light Hospice

APRIL 8, 2022

In the next section, we will discuss the differences between Hospice and Home Health care. What Is Hospice Care? Hospice is the care provided for a terminally ill patient who has a life expectancy of six months or less. This ensures proper access to medical, emotional, and spiritual care.

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