Home Health & Hospice Week

Hospices may see some effect from Medicare’s new discharge planning rule, too. The final rule published in the Sept. 30 Federal Register specifies that a hospital “discharge planning evaluation must include an evaluation of a patient’s likely need for appropriate post-hospital services, including, but not limited to, hospice care services, post-hospital extended care services, home health services, and non-health care services and community based care providers, and must also include a determination of the availability of the appropriate services as well as of the patient’s access to those services.”

Keep in mind: That is still balanced out by the Medicare policy that took effect in October 2018, prorating hospital DRG payments when patients are discharged “too early” to hospice care (see Eli’s HCW, Vol. XXVII, No. 30).

Watch for: The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 requires the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission to deliver a report on the Postacute Care Transfer Policy’s impact on hospice, partic­ularly “whether the timely access to hospice care has been affected through changes to hospital policies or behaviors,” next March.