House, Senate OK bill requiring more hospice inspections

Legislation that requires hospice facilities to be inspected at least every three years quietly cleared the House and Senate this week. President Barack Obama is expected to sign the bill.

Previously, inspections could take place as infrequently as every eight years, according to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, which pushed for the legislation.

A 2007 report by HHS' inspector general's office (PDF) called for establishing federal guidelines on how frequently hospice facilities should be certified.

The bill, known as the Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation Act of 2014, was sponsored by Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), chair of the Ways and Means Committee. It cleared the House on Tuesday and was adopted by unanimous consent on Thursday by the Senate.

The legislation also contained language designed to correct a provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that was supposed to increase scrutiny of facilities that have a disproportionate share of patients who stay for more than 180 days. But the provision has never been enforced because of concerns about how it was written. Most such technical corrections to the ACA have been stymied by entrenched GOP opposition to the federal healthcare law.

“The way it was drafted might have put the patient and families in financial jeopardy,” said Jon Keyserling, NHPCO's senior vice president for health policy. “No one intended to do that.”

A third provision of the law tweaks the formula for calculating inflation for hospice payments and payment caps. Previously two different systems for making those calculations were utilized. Under the law passed this week, the same formula would be used for all payment determinations.

“Under NHPCO's leadership, the hospice community has been on the frontlines of advocating for increased transparency, program integrity, and accountability,” J. Donald Schumacher, the group's president, said in a statement. “We believe that the hospice provisions included in the IMPACT Act are critically important steps in this direction.”

Follow Paul Demko on Twitter: @MHpdemko