After building a future carve-in into hospice strategic planning since the demonstration program was announced in 2019, now all of us in the field are trying to quickly re-think. The first questions for many providers of hospice and palliative care are, why this sudden change, and what does this mean for the future of our field? At first blush this may seem unalloyed good news for providers facing negative margins and tremendous competitive pressures…
Read MoreSue Lyn Schramm, Managing Principal at Schramm Consulting, will be presenting on site at the 2023 Annual Leadership Conference of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization in Little Rock, Arkansas on October 3. Her topic is “Using Strategic Affiliation to Thrive under VBID”.
Read MoreMedicare Accountable Care Organizations have given limited attention to end-of-life care up to now. But that may be about to change. In December 2018 Medicare announced sweeping changes to the structure and incentives of the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP). We at Schramm Consulting believe that the changes will enforce greater cost discipline for ACO owners and may offer greater opportunities to hospice and palliative care providers than they’ve enjoyed up until now.
Read MoreOn the Friday afternoon before Easter weekend, CMS dropped a bombshell. In its proposed rule for fiscal year 2020, it lays out an update to the hospice reimbursement rates that would increase all non-routine levels of care significantly. In order to make the change budget-neutral, this means CMS would reduce the scheduled increase to Routine Home Care rates to keep them essentially flat from FY2019 to FY 2020. For hospices that currently provide little or no care at the non-routine levels, this is unadulterated bad news. However, for the average freestanding nonprofit hospice, CMS believes this will have a positive effect of an overall 4.2% increase in revenue. For hospices operating dedicated hospice facilities, I believe the impact may be far better than that.
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