Dive Brief:
- The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is testing a new program that will provide concurrent hospice and curative care coverage to teminally ill patients.
- Testing of the new program will begin as early as January; 140 hospice providers will be participating.
- The purpose of the pilot program is to test whether Medicare and dually-eligible Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries who are also eligible for hospice would be more likely to enroll if they did not have to give up their curative care. It will also evaluate whether or not the combination of curative and hospice care will improve quality of care and patient satisfaction.
Dive Insight:
Historically, Medicare has only paid for hospice benefits for teminally ill patients who were no longer receiving curative care. But experts have long argued that providing both types of care concurrently would improve quality of life. The experts also claim offering both would not raise costs because more people would sign up for hospice care if they did not have to forego lifesaving care to do so.
The new program, which was authorized under the Affordable Care Act, will launch in two phases. The first phase will begin in January of 2016; the second in January of 2018. The program will be open to people who are eligible for Medicare and to those who are dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid.