Medicare spending on hospice services nearly doubled in 10 years due largely to a policy that paid providers per patient rather than according to the services rendered.
Medicare paid the same rate regardless of how often a patient received care or how extreme the patient’s condition was, which cost taxpayers an additional $7.6 billion between 2022 and 2024, according to a June report by the Government Accountability Office.
That was an overpayment rate of 83.5 percent for undelivered or insufficient routine home care, the report said.
The watchdog agency said on July 14 that the large financial incentive “may attract fraudsters” to enroll as hospices. “Said another way, if you’re getting paid the same no matter how often you show up, why show up often?”…