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3 Reasons Continuous Home Care Utilization is Falling

Hospice News

Utilization continuous home care has dropped precipitously during the past decade, with labor pressures, regulatory scrutiny and billing challenges as contributing factors. Continuous home care (CHC) represented 0.9% Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). This is down from 1.8%

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Longer Hospice Stays Lead to Larger Medicare Cost Savings

Hospice News

Despite years of scrutiny over the duration of hospice care, new data show that longer stays reduce health care costs in the last year of life by as much as 11%. All told, hospice care — regardless of length of stay — saves Medicare approximately $3.5 Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the U.S.

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Advanced Home Care Acquires Dignity Hospice

Hospice News

Massachusetts-based Advanced Home Care has acquired Dignity Hospice Care for an undisclosed amount. The transaction follows Advanced Home Care’s acquisition of Dignity Home Care late last year. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Census Bureau projections.

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Hospice Leaders: Change Must Come to the Medicare Hospice Benefit

Hospice News

Calls have grown louder for an overhauled design of the Medicare Hospice Benefit, but the path towards change is riddled with contrasting views over regulation, policy and payment structures. Part of the problem is that the [Medicare] Hospice Benefit is 40 plus years old.

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Quality Data, Cost Control: Hospices’ ‘True North’ in Medicare Advantage

Hospice News

Medicare Advantage plans are connecting the dots between quality scores and care delivery costs. When choosing a hospice to work with, payers in the Medicare Advantage (MA) realm zero in on providers’ quality scores and its patient population growth potential, according to Frontpoint Healthcare CEO Brent Korte.

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Providers to Lawmakers: Hospice a ‘Huge Value to Medicare’

Hospice News

Hospice care saves Medicare roughly $3.5 billion for patients in their last year of life, according to a joint report from the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO), the National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC) and NORC at the University of Chicago. Additionally, the U.S.

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How Medicare Budget Neutrality Impacts Hospice Payment

Hospice News

Medicare reimbursement is the lifeblood of hospice providers, and a clear understanding of policies like budget neutrality can help elucidate the payment systems that keep their businesses running. The clearest example of how this works was the 2020 rebasing of payments for the four levels of hospice care.

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