Home Health & Hospice Week

Hospices partnering with MA plans have ‘history of serving underserved communities,’ CMS official says.

If you were hoping the Medicare Advantage carve-in of hospice would quietly go away, a new high-profile blog post from Medicare may dash those hopes.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Innovation Center’s Chief Medical Officer Dora Lynn Hughes throws the spotlight on MA plans’ use of hospice in a May 11 blog post, “Advancing Health Equity Through The CMS Innovation Center: First Year Progress And What’s To Come.”

Under the MA Value-Based Insurance Design Model, participating plans will “form networks of Medicare hospice providers who have a history of serving underserved communities, have strong relationships with their local communities, actively collaborate with organizations that may help meet the health-related social needs of patients, and demonstrate cultural competency,” Hughes says in the post published in Health Affairs Forefront.

Read the post online at www.healthaffairs.org/content/ forefront/advancing-health-equity-through-cms-innovation-center-first-year-progress-and-s-come.