Home Health & Hospice Week

Non-hospice spending grabs MedPAC’s attention.

While everyone seems to agree that hospice saves Medicare money, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission still wants to slash funds from hospice providers’ rates.

In the advisory body’s Jan. 11 meeting, commissioners unanimously voted to recommend that Congress eliminate the update to the hospice base rate for 2025.

Why? Hospices saw a 10 percent jump in agency numbers in 2022, and also saw users and lengths of stay increase in that year, MedPAC noted in its presentation at the meeting. And hospices racked up a 13.3 percent profit margin in 2021, the last year available.

Even though the margin is projected to drop to 9 percent in 2024, commissioners voted to recommend a rate freeze that would strip up to $5 billion from hospice spending over five years.

“It’s kind of dizzying right now, what’s happening in the hospice space,” noted MedPAC Vice Chair Amol Navathe in the meeting.

“This recommendation is offered at a time when hospice care costs have risen faster than any inflation update provided by [the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services],” National Association for Home Care & Hospice President William Dombi says in a release. “A rate freeze would interfere with the progress made through hospice wherein highly patient-centered care, controlled by the patient at the most important point of an individual’s life, offers Medicare with significant financial savings while providing incredible end-of-life care,” Dombi protests.