Today is one month before the temporary moratoria on hospice and home health enrollment in Medicare is scheduled to end on Nov 13.
Hospices have been waiting with bated breath to see if the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will let the moratoria end or if the agency will extend it for another six months, which it has the authority to do.
To date, the agency has given no indication of what it will do. At one point CMS said it would let providers know of its plans 60 days in advance, but that never materialized.
I urge CMS to end the moratoria in November as planned. The decision to implement these was misguided and the approach is too broad. This six-month ban on enrollment has inhibited patients’ access to care and stymied providers’ growth. It has prevented them from opening de novos and disrupted acquisitions and affiliations.
Also, some new providers in markets that are not known to have widespread fraud have been unable to open their doors.
The fraud issue needs to be addressed without question, but this is not the way to do it. A number of stakeholders have argued that a more targeted approach is warranted, such as a moratorium on enrollment confined to markets where fraud is prevalent. I can get behind this. But a ban on a national scale is a mistake and hurts providers and patients.
Do you agree? Drop a comment and let me know.