Home Health & Hospice Week

As the Medicare Advantage carve-in of hospice patients proceeds, a data point from a recent Government Accountability Office report on MA plan disenrollment may give some context to the issue.

In 2015, the percent of MA plan enrollees who disenrolled from the plan in their last year of life and used hospice was 3.0 percent. The figure was almost the same for 2016 at 3.1 percent, the GAO notes in its report, Beneficiary Disenrollments to Fee-for-Service in Last Year of Life Increase Medicare Spending. Those figures crept up to 4.7 and 4.8 percent in 2017 and 2018, the GAO found.

The 40-page report is online at www.gao.gov/assets/gao-21-482.pdf.

Meanwhile: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services spells out the steps for determining “if your patient has enrolled in a plan of an MAO that is participating in the VBID Model Hospice Benefit Component” in MLN Matters Article MM12349 at www.cms.gov/files/document/mm12349.pdf.

CMS will update the list of plans participating in the Hospice Benefit Component of the VBID Model in Fall 2021 to reflect plans participating in CY 2022, it says in the article.