Hospice
05/08/2025
Review your documentation practices — and your Electronic Medicare Record (EMR) capabilities — as a clarification in attestation requirements could complicate compliance and lead to more audit scrutiny.
05/01/2025
For the first time since October 2014, CMS released an updated list of the invalid principal diagnosis codes for Medicare beneficiaries receiving hospice care.
04/24/2025
Hospice providers will see a slight increase in payments for each level of care in fiscal year 2026.
04/24/2025
CMS will be transitioning hospices to iQIES to upload HOPE data, presenting an additional challenge for some providers.
03/27/2025
Ensure your hospice agency is prepared to roll out the updated version of the CAHPS Hospice survey in April. Organizations that establish staff understanding of the modified assessment and its distribution could see a boost in both response rates and patient satisfaction scores.
03/27/2025
CMS breaks down the survey calendar for the web-mail mode in the CAHPS Hospice Survey Quality Assurance Guidelines, updated earlier this month to reflect the changes to the survey effective April 1.
03/13/2025
Educate your hospice staff on monitoring symptoms that could indicate a patient is nearing the end of life. Agencies that manage these symptoms early and take the time to prepare and comfort caregivers and families for the transition could see these successes reflected in their CAHPS Hospice survey scores.
03/06/2025
Evaluate how new requirements under the Hospice Outcomes and Patient Evaluation (HOPE) tool will impact your staff’s workflow, as agencies that are unprepared for the changes could face inefficiencies, care delays and payment reductions.
02/20/2025
Make sure hospice care plans and aide instructions are current, appropriate and applicable, as both care plans and aides are among the top survey citations for 2024. 
01/23/2025
Encourage your clinicians to communicate openly about patients’ disease process and end of life to improve survey scores, ease transitions and provide strong support for high-acuity patients and their caregivers.

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