Hospice News

SEPTEMBER 20, 2024

Unified Program Integrity Contractor (UPIC) auditors are taking a sharper look at nursing home room-and-board for hospice patients. Hospices have increasingly faced more regulatory scrutiny in recent years amid rising program integrity concerns, including ramped up UPIC audits , among various others.

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Hospice News

JUNE 13, 2024

Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) is drafting a landmark bill that, if enacted, would represent the most significant reforms to date for hospice payment and oversight. Blumenauer announced the bill, the Hospice Care Accountability, Reform, and Enforcement (Hospice CARE) Act, on Thursday at the Hospice News Elevate conference in Washington D.C.

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Hospice News

MARCH 26, 2025

Todays hospice landscape is reaching a pivotal point of evolutionary growth that has come with increased oversight as regulators seek to curb fraudulent activity in the space, according to Bill Dombi, senior counsel for the law firm Arnall Golden Gregory (AGG). What are the leading legal concerns facing hospice providers right now?

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Hospice News

MARCH 21, 2024

Members of Congress are raising questions about the continued Medicare certification for new hospices in areas rife with fraud. Though he pledged more detailed responses at a later date, Becerra told lawmakers that CMS is certifying hospices in markets where there is a need identified in the community. “I This prompted the U.S.

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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

JUNE 14, 2023

Meanwhile, Medicare hospice spending is expected to more than double by 2032. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Office of the Actuary also project that health care expenditures will represent 19.6% The report, published today in Health Affairs , did not contain hospice-specific data. and Medicaid by 3.2%.

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Hospice News

OCTOBER 3, 2023

Houston Hospice is opening up its inpatient unit for use by other providers. Other hospices will soon be able to admit patients to the company’s unit in the Texas Medical Center in Houston. They will be able to coordinate with Houston Hospice and deliver General Inpatient Care (GIP), helping to avoid hospital readmissions.

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Hospice News

JUNE 3, 2024

Hospice industry organizations have voiced support for proposed updates to the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) surveys, but raised questions on the implementation timeline. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) included the updates in its proposed hospice payment rule for 2025.

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Hospice News

SEPTEMBER 20, 2024

This is particularly true for people living in the nation’s 15,000-plus nursing homes. The grant, spread out over a five-year period, will be put toward the team’s creation of a national network structure that seeks to include more nursing home residents in clinical trials. As the U.S. Dr. Kathleen T.

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Hospice News

JUNE 2, 2023

Hosparus Health has acquired Baptist Health Deaconess Hospice in Madisonville, Kentucky, for an undisclosed sum. Founded in 1978, Hosparus Health’s 600 employees and 500 volunteers provide care for more than 10,000 patients annually, including hospice, medical care, palliative medicine, mental health and bereavement services. “Our

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Hospice News

MARCH 27, 2024

Many hospices may be unprepared to cope with a large-scale disaster or a future pandemic. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) expanded a Condition of Participation pertaining to disaster preparedness planning. Last year, The Joint Commission implemented similar requirements for hospices. In 2017, the U.S.

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Hospice News

OCTOBER 22, 2024

Errors or other inconsistencies with the payment cap can have significant consequences for providers, and sales and marketing staff can help hospices achieve a healthy balance. The cap is designed to prevent overuse of hospice, put controls on Medicare spending and foster greater access to care among patients.

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Hospice News

SEPTEMBER 29, 2023

A federal judge has sentenced Jesus Virlar-Cadena, formerly a medical director for the Texas-based hospice company Merida Group, to 50 months in prison for his role in a $152 million scheme. Evidence at the trial showed that the Merida Group marketed their hospice programs through a group of companies,” the U.S.

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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

JANUARY 11, 2023

Hospices should be required to report all instances of abuse and neglect, even if the perpetrator was not an employee, the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) requires operators to report incidents of patient abuse and neglect that involve their staff. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has recommended.

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Hospice News

DECEMBER 13, 2024

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) ramped up auditing activity in the space while also sunsetting the hospice component of its value-based insurance design (VBID) model demonstration ahead of its initial expiration. There were just some of the themes percolating among the most-read Hospice News coverage of 2024.

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Hospice News

SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

Hospices tend to see an increase in dementia patient admissions as well as home-based utilization following an acquisition by a private equity firm or a publicly traded company. After an acquisition by a public company, hospices saw a 1.4% A little more than 20% of hospice decedents in 2020 suffered from dementia, up from 18.5%

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Hospice News

DECEMBER 5, 2022

Louisiana-based CommCare Corporation recently acquired Notre Dame Hospice and Notre Dame Home Health for an undisclosed sum. CommCare’s purchase of Notre Dame’s home health and hospice operations marks the transaction of this divestiture Its nursing home services are next in line as part of a separate deal set to close in 2023.

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Hospice News

MARCH 29, 2024

The 2025 proposed hospice rule is raising some questions along with payment rates. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed a 2.6% increase in hospice per diems for 2025. We know that hospice care has demonstrated $3.5 We know that hospice care has demonstrated $3.5

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Hospice News

FEBRUARY 14, 2024

PACE programs offer a comprehensive approach to care for participants who meet certain eligibility criteria, mainly to seniors who have significant medical and non-medical needs to help them age in place and avoid the hospital or nursing homes. But they can pay us a portion of that,” Ferris told Hospice News. ”We’re

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Hospice News

SEPTEMBER 12, 2022

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in 2023 will phase out dual-eligibility special needs look-alike plans within Medicare Advantage. Some hospice patients rely on these plans for other health needs, such as nursing home costs. Of those, about 3.8

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Hospice News

FEBRUARY 12, 2025

30% of home health patients dont get initiated into care for seven days as an industry, we have to look at those numbers and decide, as leaders, its unacceptable, Compassus CEO Mike Asselta said last month during a panel discussion at the Home Care 100 conference. clinical power means mastering timely initiation of care.

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Hospice News

AUGUST 6, 2024

The nonprofit senior care provider Empath Health is partnering with the Medicare Advantage organization American Health Plans (AHP), a division of American Health Partners to serve patients who are enrolled in Institutional Special Needs Plans (ISNP). The organization is the parent company of 20 affiliates and four philanthropic foundations.

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Hospice News

MAY 4, 2022

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has reimbursed palliative care through a fee-for-service model that only covers physician and licensed independent practitioner services, rather than the full range of interdisciplinary care. Historically, the U.S. PalliCare has a two-fold approach within its care and business models.

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Hospice News

AUGUST 4, 2023

Alaska-based Bartlett Regional Hospital recently received approval from legislators to relaunch hospice and home health services nearly a year after a local provider shut down. Bartlett Regional Hospital in January began the process of taking over HHCJ’s hospice and home health patients to fill care delivery gaps in southeast Alaska.

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Hospice News

APRIL 4, 2024

Rural-based hospice providers face a range of challenges to improve access among their underserved patient populations. We hear from countless community providers and state association leaders that rural hospices are in financial trouble,” Hoover wrote in a recent letter to the U.S. “We

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Hospice News

MARCH 20, 2023

Hospices are blazing trails toward growth, each provider with its own range of strategies. Regardless of providers’ disparate methods, hospice remains a high-growth industry, expanding at an annual rate of 7% to 8% annually, Bank of America (BofA) Global Research reported in TKTK. Hospice News edited comments for length and clarity.

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Hospice News

MAY 2, 2023

Addus HomeCare Corporation’s (NASDAQ: ADUS) hospice segment is seeing slow but steady improvement as pandemic headwinds ease. Meanwhile, the company’s near-term acquisition sights are set more on home health than in personal care amid potential payment shifts. We believe that hospice volumes will continue to steadily improve.”

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Hospice News

JANUARY 16, 2023

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). They included VA hospice encounters in the outcome but not enrollment in a home hospice program, nursing home hospice center or Medicare-paid hospice.

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Hospice News

MAY 8, 2023

The provider’s executive team combines Fluhart’s business experience with the clinical expertise brought by Hughes, a nurse practitioner herself. We’re growing pretty exponentially right now, especially in skilled facilities like nursing homes and such. It’s not the same as home health and hospice.

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Hospice News

FEBRUARY 24, 2023

VITAS saw nursing home admissions rise 9.4% and home-based admissions also dipped 7.5%. VITAS launched the initiative in an effort to improve timely access to hospice care. The decline resulted from the reinstated 2% Medicare sequestration, a 2.8% in Q4, along with a 2.7% jump from assisted living facilities.

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Hospice News

JANUARY 25, 2023

The nonprofit hospice provider’s subsidiary — Care Guide Partners — has applied to the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for a PACE license, according to CEO David Cook. Before coming to Hosparus in 2021, Cook led an organization in North Carolina that offered both hospice and PACE.

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Hospice News

SEPTEMBER 29, 2022

The company foresees opportunities to collaborate with other providers in the care continuum, including primary care physicians, home health, and hospice and palliative care organizations, according to CEO and Co-Founder Kris Engskov. “On Engskov, a former president of the U.S. division of Starbucks Corp. “We

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Hospice News

APRIL 11, 2024

Angela Hospice’s New Senior Living Inpatient Facility Michigan-based Angela Hospice recently unveiled plans to open a new inpatient center at a senior living facility. Set to open this summer, the hospice facility will feature 15 patient beds at Lourdes Senior Community in Waterford, Michigan. The William B. and Janet B.

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Hospice News

NOVEMBER 1, 2022

Since 2020, the company has been beleaguered by the staffing shortage, reduced lengths of stay, and disruption in skilled nursing, senior housing, and to some extent acute-care referrals. These factors, along with the return of Medicare sequestration, have contributed to declining revenues. drop among those referred from hospitals.

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Hospice News

AUGUST 29, 2024

Two Illinois-headquartered hospice operators have stretched their footprints into additional counties. Transitions Care has expanded its service region to include the Rock Island community in its home state. In addition to its home state, Transitions’ footprint includes locations in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

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Hospice News

SEPTEMBER 22, 2023

By the Bay Health and Mission Hospice & Home Care recently signed a letter of intent to merge the two California-organizations. The new organization – combining two of the longest-standing not-for-profit hospices in California – would be uniquely positioned to serve more patients and families.”

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