Home Health & Hospice Week
MedPAC Readies Hospice Rate Freeze Proposal For 2018
Advisory body predicts a 7.7 percent profit margin for 2017.
Hospices won’t find any presents from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commissionunder their trees this year.
In its Dec. 9 meeting, MedPAC Commissioners gave preliminary approval to a recommendation for a 0 percent payment update for hospices. That’s despite the fact that MedPAC predicts a 7.7 percent profit margin for hospices in 2017 — down from 8.2 percent in 2014 and 8.5 percent in 2013. While profit margins appear to be declining, other hospice stats are going up, noted MedPAC’s Kim Neuman in the meeting. That includes utilization, spending and number of hospice providers.
And while the live discharge rate is down from 18.4 percent in 2013 to 16.7 percent in 2015, it’s still a problem, Neuman highlighted. “In 2015, 10 percent of hospices had a live discharge rate exceeding 50 percent,” she illustrated.
MedPAC made the same recommendation last year, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services still increased hospice payment rates by 2.1 percent for FY 2017 (see Eli’s HCW, Vol. XXV, No. 29). That was based on a 2.7 percent inflation update.
Note: “Under current law, the hospice payment update for FY2018 is capped at 1 percent, exclusive of the budget sequester,” points out the National Association for Home Care & Hospice in its member newsletter.
Stay tuned: MedPAC will finalize its recommendations at its January meeting for its annual March report to Congress.
Home Health & Hospice Week
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