Dive Brief:
- Since the start of 2016, Medicare’s new Care Choices pilot program has allowed patients to simultaneously obtain home-hospice care while also continuing to undergo treatment for cases of advanced cancers, COPD, CHF and HIV/AIDS.
- The experiment aims to draw more patients toward hospice care to improve quality of life, and to potentially impact healthcare costs because those in hospice spend less time in hospitals.
- After receiving higher than anticipated interest, CMS expanded the model from 30 Medicare-certified hospices to more than 140, and increased the pilot's duration from three to five years.
Dive Insight:
While on the one hand the CMS is encouraging hospice utilization, on the other hand the OIG is working against it, having argued in September that many patients placed in hospice care don't belong there or don't understand that accepting hospice care means forgoing further treatment. It recommended hospice care providers improve election statements and ensure physicians have met requirements for recommending hospice care.
Caught in the middle, hospice care is a major industry that cost Medicare $15.1 billion in 2013, according to the Washington Post, and where patients land for end-of-life care will impact the healthcare industry as a whole.
Allowing patients the benefits of both hospice care and continued treatment could provide them the best of both worlds and save money, the argument goes.
Over the course of the pilot, CMS will look at impacts on service utilization, quality of care, and patient and family satisfaction, the agency said. While the first phase is already underway, the second will begin in January 2018. As many as 150,000 Medicare beneficiaries are expected to have the option to participate.