Home Health & Hospice Week

Make sure your hospice has May 1 marked in red on your calendar for next year.

Why? “Effective May 1, 2024, for Medicare to pay for hospice services, the following physicians must enroll in Medicare or opt out:

* Hospice medical director or the physician member of the hospice interdisciplinary group who certifies the patient’s terminal condition

* Patient-designated attending physician (if they have one) who certifies their terminal condition,” the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services says in its MLN Connects electronic newsletter.

The requirement applies to fee-for-service hospice services only, CMS notes.

Pointer: “Hospices can quickly verify a physician’s enrollment or opt-out status using the CMS ordering and referring data file (ORDF), which lists all Medicare-enrolled and opted-out physicians,” the newsletter advises. “We’ll modify the ORDF to create a separate column with this status,” CMS adds.

The ORDF is at https://data.cms.gov/provider-characteristics/medicare-provider-supplier-enrollment/order-and-referring/data. The article is at www.cms.gov/training-education/medicare-learning-network/newsletter/2023-11-16-mlnc#_Toc150946025.