Home Health & Hospice Week

Community Networking, Fundraising Key to Staying in the Black

If the payment increase offered by Medicare this year is less than hospices would like, it should be an incentive to wean themselves off the Medicare reimbursement stream, one expert says.

Hospice rates will see a 3.4 percent increase in fiscal year 2004 - the same rate of increase as 2003 - according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' July 3 program memorandum A-03-057 (see related charts, "Fiscal Year 2004").

"The rates are about what we thought they would be," says Janet Neigh with the Hospice Association of America. "The 3.4 percent for 2004 is not surprising at all," agrees hospice consultant Rita Burch with Rutherfordton, NC-based Watchman Inc.

But also not surprising is the fact that hospices continue to struggle under Medicare's meager reimbursement rates, Burch insists. "Medicare rates have never been adequate to cover the cost of our patients," she tells Eli. "We should not be so dependent on Medicare for the overall picture for our hospice agencies."


3 Tips to Better Hospice Finances

Hospices that fail to utilize other, non-Medicare resources are shortchanging themselves and potential patients. Hospices shouldn't "look to Medicare to fully cover costs because they never have and they may never want to pay for this service we provide," Burch maintains.

Burch offers these tips for hospices trying to reduce their dependency on Medicare and get their finances into tip-top shape:

1. Community networking. "Full integration with the community, particularly through the faith community, will increase patients, which produces volume," Burch points out.

2. Length of stay. A "healthier bottom line" that helps cover costs for extremely short-term patients isn't the only product of longer lengths of stay, Burch contends. "Increased length of stay will produce higher patient and staff satisfaction," she says.

3. Fundraising. As much as some may want to avoid it, spreading the word about hospice's financial needs is important to funding its mission. "Increasing awareness of our funding should produce more donations and volunteer labor cost savings," Burch says.

The hospice cap for FY 2004 will be $18,661.29. CMS will publish the revised hospice wage index before the rates' Oct. 1 implementation date, according to the memo.

Editor's Note: The memo is at www.cms.gov/manuals/pm_trans/A03057.pdf.