Home Health & Hospice Week

MedPAC commissioners take aim at long stays. You'll have a new hospice quality reporting requirement to deal with next year, but less money to do so if MedPAC gets its way. In its Jan. 12 meeting, the Medicare Pay-ment Advisory Commission voted to recommend to Congress a 0.5 increase to hospices' payment update in 2013. But combined with the fourth year of the budget neutrality adjustment factor (BNAF) phase-out -- a 0.6 percent cut -- hospice reimbursement rates would actually fall 0.1 percent next year under the proposal, points out the National Asso-ciation for Home Care & Hospice. To make their decision, the influential MedPAC commissioners looked at statistics including hospices' average profit margins. For the last year with complete data, 2009, hospices generated a 7.1 percent margin -- up from an average 5.1 percent margin in 2008, MedPAC staff Kim Neuman explained in the meeting. However, MedPAC expects the margin to drop [...]