Late yesterday, a reader (who also happens to be a client from time to time), posed this question to me. “When hospitals discharge to hospice and if the hospice has to readmit to the hospital, the hospital doesn’t get penalized for the readmit? Is this true?” Since this question is not one that I have been asked, to my recollection, ever before my guess is that others may have a similar query or interest. My answer to him/the question, follows.
The short answer is that the readmission penalty issue is not applicable for a hospice to acute hospital transfer/admission. There is one single caveat that must be present, however: The patient in question must be on the Medicare Hospice benefit rather than traditional Part A and receiving services under some other Hospice offered program such as a Palliative Care program (a home health care style offering). Below is the reason and regulatory/legal construct why the readmission penalty is not applicable.
- When a patient elects and is qualified under the Medicare Hospice benefit, the patient opts (effectively) out of his/her traditional Medicare benefit structure – including the assumed coverage for inpatient hospital coverage offered under Medicare Part A.
- The issue or applicability for readmission penalties for hospitals is only under traditional Medicare fee-for-service or qualified Medicare Advantage plans It is also only applicable to certain originating DRGs (not all readmissions qualify for a penalty).
- When a patient enrolls in the Medicare Hospice benefit, the assumptive relationship under Medicare with regard to the patient and his/her provider relationship changes. The assumption becomes that the patient is effectively, now the “property” (bad word choice but illustrative nonetheless) of the Hospice. This is so much so that no patient can receive the Hospice benefit under Medicare without becoming a patient of a qualified, certified Hospice provider. Unlike the relationship under traditional or managed Medicare, the patient care is thus the property and coordinated responsibility of the Hospice. Prior to enrollment, the patient had no connective relationship to any provider – free (for the most part) to seek care from any qualified provider (Med Advantage networks notwithstanding).
- By his/her enrollment in the Hospice benefit with a Hospice, the patient agrees to a set of covered benefits tied to his/her end-of-life care needs. He/she also elects to have his/her care effectively provided by or through the Hospice exclusively. In fact, the patient can’t really show-up at a hospital for an admission and expect to be admitted, without the approval of the Hospice. The only option a patient has to receive care in this fashion is to “opt out” of the Hospice benefit.
- Once a patient is enrolled in Hospice, there effectively is no “hospital” benefit left. The use of a hospital by a Hospice patient is through the Hospice exclusively and any hospital or inpatient use is (only) technically via a GIP or other contracted event/need. In fact, the hospital has no DRG or admission code nor records the GIP stay as a “hospital” admission. It (the hospital) can’t create a bill to Medicare for this event and must seek all payment through the Hospice. As no bill is generated to Medicare Part A with a corresponding DRG and billing code, no inpatient admission occurred and thus, no readmission occurs either applicable (or not) for a penalty.
Like most things Medicare, you won’t find a succinct “memo” to this effect. Instead, you have to know and go through the detail on the program benefit side and understand how billing, coding and benefit eligibility/program payments work for each provider segment.