Yesterday, CMS confirmed the details of an earlier published proposed rule (May) set for publication on August 22, 2014 (final rule) regarding FY 2015 hospice payments. Anyone wishing a copy of the Federal Register text, please contact me as provided on this site (either via comment or contact info. in Author page). As is always the case with these final rules, CMS addresses multiple components of the programmatic rules, not just payment. In other words, the “benefit” (coverage, eligibility, payments, etc.) are often adjusted or modified to codify other legislation (the ACA for example) or recommendations for congressional hearings and Medpac. Such again is the case for Hospices.
A summary of the key provisions in the final rule are as follows.
- Payment: Hospices will receive on average, an increase of 1.4% in reimbursement. This is a function of a 2.1% increase in the market basket (inflation) minus a .7% in overall payments resulting from the 6th year of the 7 year phase-out of the BNAF (Budget Neutrality Adjustment Factor). The 1.4% is applied to daily home care rate and the resulting rates for GIP and Continuous Home Care are $708 and $930 per day respectively.
- Quality Reporting: Introduced in 2014, hospices are required to report certain quality measure data to CMS. Failure to report the data equals a 2% reduction in payments. For 2015, no new quality measures are forthcoming although CMS is requiring that all hospices participate in the CAHPS (Hospice Survey)/Hospice Quality Reporting Program for one month in the first quarter of 2015 and then monthly for April through December for payment implication in 2017 and then collect survey data Payment implications in 2018 require data collection for every calendar month in 2016.
- Attending Physicians: Hospices will be required to identify the patient’s attending physician on the Election Form – at the time the patient elects the Hospice Benefit.
- Notice of Eligibility/Notice of Termination: CMS defines prompt filing as 3 days after election or 3 days post revocation/termination.
- CAP Determinations: CMS is requiring all hospices to finalize their aggregate cap calculations within 5 months after the CAP year-end (March 31) and re-pay any overages accordingly. They are not issuing any requirement for such calculations on the inpatient cap.
- Guidance on Hospice Eligibility: CMS issues further guidance on how a hospice should determine eligibility for hospice; essentially the determination of terminality. The benefit requires the patient to be terminally ill and death to most probably occur within 6 months or less. The guidance is that the Hospice Medical Director should consider the terminal diagnosis, the health conditions of the patient related or unrelated to the terminal condition and all other current clinical data relevant to the diagnoses. The point in this provision is CMS stating that physician’s must use clinical relevancy as the means for determining appropriate/inappropriate by “terminal” likelihood.
Finally, the ACA requires the Secretary of DHHS to make recommendations regarding benefit reform and begin the same thereto, no earlier than October 31, 2013. Nothing in the rule gives any indication of wholesale movement toward payment reform. The glimpses remain the same in the discussion sections of trends in utilization patterns; primarily declining Continuous Care stays and increasing live discharges. As before, the outlook appears to be for a payment system that is bell-shaped – higher in the first days of the stay, moderating at stability, and again higher at the end or near death. CMS shows nothing about how this might work other than to continue to make vague references to a system similar.