This week, the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate passed the Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation Act of 2014 (IMPACT Act), legislation which includes hospice integrity provisions that are backed by the hospice community. The National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (www.nhpco.org) supports this legislation and the additional oversight it will bring to end-of-life care providers.
The IMPACT Act (H.R. 4994) requires more frequent surveys of hospice providers – a measure the hospice community NHPCO has championed for more than a decade. The bill mandates that all Medicare certified hospices be surveyed every three years for at least the next ten years.
A 2007 HHS Office of the Inspector General report found that current survey measures for Medicare-certified hospices was not providing sufficient oversight.
NHPCO has supported this provision since it was originally recommended by MedPAC in 2009.
NHPCO reports that more than 1.5 million dying Americans receive care for the nation’s hospice providers every year.