Home Health & Hospice Week

Quality reporting, surveys, and more discussed by CMS reps at industry meeting. Congress has asked for Medicare hospice payment reform by October 2013 or later, but the timeline may lean toward "later," recent comments from CMS officials indicate. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has contracted with Abt Associates and Acumen to perform parts of the research and analysis that will go into formulating a new hospice payment system, noted CMS's Zinnia Harrison in a CMS panel on hospice during the National Associa-tion for Home Care & Hospice's annual March on Washington conference. Congress said the reform should occur October 2013 or later, so the October date "is not a solid deadline," Harrison told attendees at the March 26 session in Washington, D.C. CMS is not committed to reform taking effect in fiscal year 2014 which starts in October 2013, added CMS's Randy Throndset in the session. It "may [...]