Medicare Bans New Hospice, Senior Care Providers for Six Months

The Trump administration announced a six-month moratorium on Medicare enrollment for hospices and home health agencies in an effort to crack down on alleged rampant fraud across the service category.

The nationwide moratorium will “temporarily halt the influx of new providers into these high-risk categories,” the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid said in an announcement Wednesday. Doing so would help bolster the administration’s effort to crack down on “fraud, waste, and abuse in the Medicare program by stopping improper billing and preventing bad actors from entering the system,” the department said.

The moratorium follows similar actions taken by the administration to stifle fraud across the Medicare program. In February, the CMS issued a similar six-month, nationwide enrollment moratorium on suppliers of durable medical equipment such as wheelchairs and knee braces.

Shortly after, the White House launched a task force coordinating a national strategy to tackle alleged abuses within federal benefits programs. The enforcement posture was followed by several arrests, including a recent sentencing of a former NFL player convicted of bilking nearly $200 million from Medicare and the Department of Veterans Affairs through a scheme that saw both programs billed for orthotic braces.

The CMS says that under the six-month moratorium, officials will investigate home health and hospice providers that are suspected of committing Medicare fraud.

The enrollment ban will apply to all new Medicare enrollment applications and will block certain changes in majority ownership, which the CMS says are frequently used to obscure control by criminals.

“The moratoria will not impact current enrollments, and existing providers can continue to deliver services to Medicare beneficiaries,” the CMS said.