Home Health & Hospice Week

Over industry protest, an influential advisory body to Congress is pushing lawmakers to make a drastic across-the-board cut in Medicare hospice payment policy.

“For fiscal year 2024, the Congress should … wage adjust and reduce the hospice aggregate cap by 20 percent,” the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission says in its latest annual report to Congress released on March 15. Unlike in previous years, however, MedPAC doesn’t recommend a straight-up rate cut in addition the cap reduction.

If adopted, the cap cut would decrease Medicare spending by up to $750 million in 2024 and up to $10 billion over five years, the report notes.

“There is the potential to focus payment reductions on providers with disproportionately long stays and high margins,” MedPAC says of the cap reduction. “Under this recommendation, payments would increase for many hospice providers by an estimated 2.9 percent, while payments would be reduced for providers with very long lengths of stay and low costs relative to payments.”

Note: The hospice chapter of the report is at www.medpac. gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Ch10_Mar23_MedPAC_ Report_To_Congress_SEC.pdf; see an upcoming issue of HHHW by AAPC for more details.