Hospice Industry Groups Call for Telehealth, Chaplain Services Claims Codes

Hospice advocates have called on the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to establish a Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) code for chaplain services, as well as a code for telehealth visits. 

Four organizations sent a letter to CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, including the National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC), the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO), the National Partnership for Hospice Innovation (NPHI) and LeadingAge.

While establishing the codes would not impact the amount of hospices’ per diem reimbursement, the codes would allow providers to gather data regarding an essential component of their interdisciplinary teams as well as burgeoning levels of telehealth services. Currently, the chaplain is the only member of the interdisciplinary team that cannot report visits on Medicare claims.

Advertisement

“We strongly urge CMS to reconsider its rejection of the recommendation to create a HCPCS code for reporting of visits by hospice chaplains, as collection of data on such visits would give CMS, researchers, and other hospice stakeholders and policymakers more accurate information related to the variety of services provided to patients who elect hospice care and allow for development of additional quality measures going forward,” the groups said in the letter.

Currently, three existing HCPCS codes exist for hospice spiritual care that include assessment as well as individual and group counseling. But these only apply to chaplaincy services within the Veterans Health Administration.

While spiritual care falls under the bereavement assessment as part of the four core hospice services, providers currently have no way of tracking the volume or quality of these services. This can put them at a disadvantage when communicating the value of spiritual care to patients and payers.

Advertisement

Likewise, the hospice organizations called for the inclusion of telehealth visits on claims, particularly in light of the boom in those services during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) recently indicated that it plans to recommend that the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) require hospices to report telehealth visits on Medicare claims. MedPAC indicated that a lack of telehealth utilization data during the pandemic has made it difficult to accurately predict costs for coming years.

In light of the MedPAC recommendation, the four signatories on the letter repeated their previous calls for telehealth reporting on claims.

“The current prohibition on reporting of technology-based visits on hospice claims severely limits the ability of CMS, hospice providers and other stakeholders to determine the full scope of patient and family interactions being conducted by various hospice care disciplines, to assess the value of the use of technologies on the delivery of hospice services, and to evaluate the impact such visits may have on the quality of care provided,” the letter said.

Companies featured in this article:

, , ,