The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released a report on January 13, 2015, “Medicare Hospices Have Financial Incentives to Provide Care in Assisted Living Facilities.” OIG found that in assisted living facilities, hospices provide longer periods of care than in other settings, and that beneficiaries in ALFs often required less complex care. This means the hospices providing services to ALFs received higher Medicare payments for less complex care due to the length of services provided.
Some of the recommendations to CMS include:
- Reforming the payment system to receive incentives for hospice providers to target beneficiaries who are likely to have longer stays and have certain diagnoses
- Developing and adopting claims-based measures of quality
- Making hospice data publicly available to beneficiaries
View the full report on the OIG website.