Home Health & Hospice Week

The meteoric rise of hospice spending seems to have come to an end. Medicare hospice spending rose roughly 20 percent per year from 2000 to 2005 but only 6 percent per year from 2007 to 2010, notes the Congressional Budget Office in a new paper analyzing why Medicare fee-for-service spending has slowed. Spending for durable medical equipment and Part B drugs also slowed in that timeframe, the CBO says.

"It is possible that the more rapid growth in hospice utilization early in the decade contributed to faster Medicare spending growth, and that the tempered growth in hospice outlays later in the decade could have contributed to the slowdown in overall Medicare spending," notes the National Associa-tion for Home Care & Hospice.

A link to the paper is online at www.cbo.gov/publication/44513.