There is some good news for hospice providers. Hospice providers will receive a 2.1% Medicare payment rate increase for CY 2017, according to a final rule issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The final amount is slightly higher than the increase of 2%, or $330 million overall, which CMS proposed in April.
View further details from LeadingAge National:
Payment
- CMS finalized an estimated 2.7% market basket increase, then reduced it by a 0.3 percentage point productivity adjustment and a 0.3 percentage point adjustment required by law.
- The hospice cap for 2017 will be $28,404.99, which is equal to the 2016 cap, updated by the 2017 payment rate update of 2.1%. The Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation (IMPACT) Act of 2014, required the hospice cap be linked to the payment rate update rather than the consumer price index for urban consumers. The 2017 cap year starts October 1, 2016, and ends September 30, 2017.
Quality
- Two new quality measures also are finalized in the rule: hospice visits when death is imminent, and the hospice and palliative care composite process measure.
- Public reporting of hospice quality data via “Compare” website is scheduled for CY 2017.
Hospice CAHPS® Experience of Care Survey
The final rule provides a description of the Hospice CAHPS® Survey, including the model of survey implementation, the survey respondents, eligibility criteria for the sample, and the languages in which the survey is offered, among other details. The final rule also outlines participation requirements for the FY 2019 and FY 2020 annual payment updates (APU). For the FY 2019 APU, hospices must collect survey data on an ongoing basis from January through December of CY 2017. For the FY 2020 APU, hospices must collect survey data on an ongoing basis from January through December of CY 2018. The final rule also includes survey data submission deadlines for the FY 2018, FY 2019, and FY 2020 APU periods. Public display of the survey results will not occur until CMS has collected at least four quarters of data. CMS anticipates that public display of the data will occur during CY 2017.
CMS is also considering revising the current Hospice Item Set (HIS) data collection instrument to have similar components found in data collection instruments used by other post-acute care settings. CMS stated that “This revised data collection instrument would be a comprehensive patient assessment instrument, rather than the current chart abstraction tool.”
The final rule is set to be published in the August 5th edition of the Federal Register and become effective October 1, 2016.
