A recent study of nursing students providing palliative care in a Thailand-based intensive care unit (ICU) indicates a need to include exposure to these services in medical education and training. Researchers examined the experiences of nine Thai third-year nursing students providing palliative care to terminally ill patients in the ICU who had varying levels of […]
Rising regulatory scrutiny around length of stay may be having adverse impacts on health care costs and quality, hospice leaders said in a recent Congressional briefing. Fear of regulatory attention, audits or post-payment reviews related to longer stays could drive some hospice providers to discharge patients who can still benefit from their services, according to […]
The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is giving hospices a 3.1% increase to their per diem payments for 2024, according to a final rule published Friday. That will translate to a $780 million bump to hospice payments next year compared to Fiscal Year 2023, according to CMS. The finalized rule also raises […]
Payers and private equity investors are among the new entrants stepping deeper into the hospice space. This trend has heated up competition and merger and acquisition (M&A) activity, while posing opportunities for strategic growth in an evolving value-based landscape. The hospice industry has seen a swath of new entrants amid record-level transaction volume and soaring […]
Workforce and patient census are rebounding for the Chemed Corp. (NYSE: CHE) subsidiary VITAS Healthcare, but financial pressure points remain. The gains have come with significant effort and costs, including the roll out of its recruitment and retention bonus program last July. Since then, the hospice provider has seen sequential improvements during the last four […]
A restructuring of the Medicare Hospice Benefit could have impacts on merger and acquisition activity in the industry. Calls for changes to hospice eligibility and length of stay are growing louder among industry stakeholders. A main concern being voiced to the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is that the current six-month prognosis […]
Breaking down the payment barriers that impede access to palliative care will take building up a reimbursement structure that more narrowly defines service scope and sets specific parameters for quality. The nation’s fragmented payment structures for palliative care reimbursement create opportunities for regulators to examine the facets of these different models across varied geographic areas […]
Palliative care lacks a standardized definition within current value-based reimbursement systems, making it difficult to determine the full scope of services for seriously ill patients. Palliative care services are intended to address physical, psychosocial, social and spiritual needs of seriously ill individuals. However, the full breadth of interdisciplinary services involved in palliative care has yet […]
Data are reshaping the health care space, and hospice is no exception. Data has played a large role in the ability to gauge the impact of end-of life care. Hospice providers have needed a window into access and utilization, as well as how lawmakers are shaping policies around health care. This article is the second […]
Regulatory challenges have contributed to the hospice sector’s current M&A slump, but this year’s volume nevertheless aligns with experts’ forecasts. In addition to those pressures, the industry is also in a cooling period in which companies focus on integrating the assets that many acquired during flurries of activity in 2021 and 2022, according to Mark […]
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