Home Health & Hospice Week

Is the oversight agency a day late and a dollar short in its latest report?

A new report from the Government Accountability Office takes Medicare officials to task for falling down on the job when it comes to hospice surveys, but many of the problems listed are already solved — or the resolutions are at least in progress.

In a report released May 8, CMS Needs to Fully Implement Statutory Provisions and Prioritize Certain Overdue Surveys, the GAO urges the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to “prioritize the completion of standard surveys for hospices that are overdue for a survey based on potential risk factors, which could include the amount of time overdue or evidence of past quality issues.”

But CMS doesn’t agree. Accrediting organizations “have completed all overdue standard surveys resulting from the COVID-19 public health emergency,” CMS Assistant Secretary for Legislation Melanie Anne Egorin says in the agency’s response letter to the draft report. And “there are a limited number of states still addressing survey backlogs,” Egorin tells the GAO. CMS will work with those states directly, she added.

CMS has already taken action on the GAO’s other recommendations, which include implementing alternative sanctions, making survey data public, and reducing inconsistency between surveyors, Egorin says.

The 50-page report is at www.gao.gov/assets/gao-24-106442.pdf.