Eli's Hospice Insider

Find out if you are sticking out like a sore thumb to the feds by checking their Moratoria Provider Services and Utilization Data Tool, which has been renamed the Market Saturation and Utilization Data Tool.

For the first time, the tool contains hospice data. “For each hospice provider, the data set has the total number of days of care that were provided, distinct number of beneficiaries served, total charges, total Medicare payments, and total Medicare standardized payments,” the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services explains in a fact sheet about the hospice Public Use File. The tool also has information on the number of hospice beneficiaries with hospice care days of less than seven, more than 60, and more than 180 in 2014; and data on primary diagnoses, sites of service, and hospice beneficiary demographics, CMS explains.

Stats: The tool, which contains data from 2014, shows an average of 70 hospice days per user and an average live discharge rate of 11 percent.

See the tool at https://data.cms.gov/market-saturation and the hospice fact sheet at www.cms.gov/Newsroom/MediaReleaseDatabase/Fact-sheets/2016-Fact-sheets-items/2016-10-06.html.