I am not a big video game player, but I recently bought a new system. My daughters, who live in different states now, play together online, and I thought I would join them.
However, I just can’t figure out the game they play, Fortnite. I get “killed” by other online players before I can get my bearings or do anything. But I will keep at it.
We had a big story on Hospice News yesterday. The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will be changing the 2027 hospice payment rates for all four levels of care due to a technical error in calculating the wage index.
This could have a big ripple effect on hospices that have already done revenue projections and strategic planning for next year. They will need to reexamine and recalculate those numbers and plans, and the amount of time they will have to do this is unclear. CMS has not issued the updated rates yet, and they are set for an Oct. 1 implementation.
CMS noted on its website that would change the rates, but the agency issued no press release or widespread announcement. So many providers may be unaware. Also, your vendors may not know about this, particularly those that help with billing, software and electronic medical records. Hospices need to have conversations with those companies to ensure they are aware of what’s coming and can adjust their own 2027 projections and systems.
In my 26 years of covering health care, this is the first time I can recall such an error taking place. Other sources have told me similar things. CMS can make corrections without publishing a new proposed rule, so hopefully that will expedite the process of making things right.
One would hope that the result of this would be payments going up, as rates have not kept up with inflation, fuel or other rising costs. But right now, we just don’t know what the agency will do. The rates could potentially go down. It will likely vary from market to market.
At this late stage of the game, hospices will have to roll with this punch. How is your organization going to prepare? Please drop a comment.
Not a hospice on our end, so I'll take the vendor half of the question - it's the part that worries me most.
The advice is right: call your billing company, your EMR, your reimbursement software vendor, and confirm the corrected wage index is actually in their system. But look at what that produces. A phone call, repeated a few thousand times, and nothing at the end that anyone can hold. Three weeks out from Oct. 1, almost no organization will have a dated line saying, "this system is running the corrected FY2027 wage index as of this date, confirmed by this person."