I hope everybody enjoys the forthcoming Labor Day holiday. We are supposed to go camping with friends, but it might be canceled. I wait in Limbo.
I recently had the pleasure of interviewing for Hospice News Denis Fleming, Jr., the newly appointed chief government affairs officer for the National Alliance for Care at Home. We had a great conversation about some of the pressing regulatory issues facing hospices today, like provisions of the 2027 final rule or the current moratoria on Medicare enrollment.
However, due to length I wasn’t able to squeeze the whole interview in. So here, as a supplement, are Denis’ additional comments on the Alliance’s legislative priorities. Denis refers to some specific legislation and regulatory actions. Check out the linked Hospice News and Home Health Care News stories for additional context.
What are the most important issues the alliance is tracking on the legislative front?
In my 14 years, I’m not sure that I have seen as much interest legislatively in home health and hospice, and I think that’s evidenced on a bipartisan basis.
We saw a letter on home-based care from 14 Senate Democrats, although you can see there’s interest on a bipartisan basis to enhancing the hospice benefit, addressing program integrity, but trying to see it greatly improved.
That letter that was signed by 14 Democrats spoke specifically about how they’re looking for more innovative ideas to improve care in the home, improve the Medicare benefit for care in the home, which includes hospice, and improve [home- and community-based services (HCBS)].
Are there specific bills you are watching?
We’ve got the [Rep Beth Van Dyne (R-Texas) bill. We’ve got the [Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.)] bill on the home health side. There’s been the Hospice Cares Act.
We’re working on developing a work stream to try to improve the hospice benefit and try to make sure we have stability in the payment rate, address the [Service & Spending Variation Index (SSVI)] and the moratoria.
We’ve seen support on both sides of the aisle, both chambers and in both committees of jurisdiction for protection and enhancement of the hospice benefit.
And I would mention as an additional point that we certainly oppose any carve-in of the hospice benefit into Medicare Advantage. We are fortunate to not see any indications of that, but we always want to be alert to that.
Back to Jim
So that’s what the Alliance is thinking about at the legislative front. I actually endorsed Rep. Van Duyne’s bill, designed to instill more targeted approaches to hospice fraud.
What are your thoughts on some of these issues? Do you support more targeted efforts to fight fraud, as opposed to national actions like moratoria?