Mastodon Hospice Cap ~ Pallimed

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Hospice Cap

More noise is being made in the last few weeks online regarding the "Hospice Cap", the mechanism by Medicare to cap spending on hospice as an aggregate. If you have not heard about the Hospice Cap yet, Les Morgan interviews Larry Beresford about the Hospice Cap on the Growth House site (around 30mins). Larry also posted a summary on his blog. Both are fairly balanced in approaching the views of both sides.

The National Alliance for Hospice Access is the main organizing group for repealing/reforming the Hospice Cap. The main public relations approach is to use the Cap as a foil, that is preventing hospices from caring for patients. On Twitter, a few accounts have been set up just for this PR reason to reiterate that the Hospice Cap is bankrupting 'hospice' as a whole and as individual hospices. So there is a real push to educate the public about the hospice cap.

The main debate between hospices seems to be between hospices who hit the cap vs. hospices who do not hit the cap. This has the potential to really set hospice agencies against each other regionally and nationally. I do not think the NHPCO or AAHPM or HPNA have weighed in on this issue yet.

What do you know/think about the hospice cap? Is this a problem for a few hospices or the field as a greater whole?

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