Hospice:
Don't Give Extra Hospice Services To Nursing Homes, Even When They Ask
Published on Mon Oct 18, 2010
The OIG will be watching. The excuse of "everybody's doing it" won't hold water when the feds show up to examine your hospice-nursing home interactions. The hospice section of the 2012 HHS Office of Inspector General work plan says the agency "will review hospices' marketing materials and practices and their financial relationships with nursing facilities." The work plan goes on to point out that the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission "has noted that hospices and nursing facilities may be involved in inappropriate enrollment and compensation. MedPAC has also highlighted instances in which hospices aggressively marketed their services to nursing facility residents." Watch out: "We will focus our review on hospices that have a high percentage of their beneficiaries in nursing facilities," the work plan states (see story on the OIG's related report, Eli's HCW, Vol. XX, No. 30, p. 233). "What we know the OIG is looking at by virtue of [...]