HHS Proposes Medicare Pay Bump for Hospices, More Transparency

The Trump administration proposed new transparency measures for hospices under Medicare amid a focus on fraud led by Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz.

The proposed rule (RIN 0938-AV78), released Thursday by the CMS, also includes updates to the hospice wage index, which adjusts daily Medicare hospice payments based on differences in labor costs across geographic regions.

The measure proposes a new analysis of non-hospice spending in an effort to better identify fraud and overutilization, as well as to require hospices to list for patients what services are not covered under Medicare’s hospice benefit.

“Hospices ...