Medicare's end-of-life benefit costs billions a year. A new approach aims to eliminate waste and weed out bad actors, while making hospice services more inviting to those who need them most.
, deputy administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the agency hopes the effort will help ensure all beneficiaries have"access to high quality and coordinated care.", a consultant who has advised Medicare and private insurers."The hope is this pilot sheds some light on the guidelines and guardrails needed.
Here's how the traditional program works now: To become eligible for hospice, patients must have two doctors certify they have less than six months to live and agree to stop all attempts at curing their terminal illness. Many experts believe that harsh choice between giving up hope and getting help from hospice — along with the arbitrary six-month cutoff — combine to repel many patients who could otherwise benefit. Only about
of Native, Asian, Black and Hispanic patients elect hospice compared to about half of white patients.
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