Hospice Deals Remain Hot Amid Heightened Industry Scrutiny

Government efforts to improve quality, fight fraud, and stop profiteering in the hospice industry are partly responsible for a record wave of mergers and acquisitions that hedge against a new Medicare payment system.

From a handful of small nonprofit organizations in the 1970s, hospice end-of-life care has grown into a thriving $19 billion a year industry led mainly by for-profit, investor-owned companies.

Medicare is the nation’s largest payer for hospice care, covering more than 90% of patient stays in 2018 on behalf of more than 1.5 million beneficiaries. Use of the Medicare hospice benefit will grow as millions of aging ...