Hospice Survey Reform

The HOSPICE Act passed out of the House on December 8, 2020. In the version of the bill that will pass as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, routine hospice survey frequency will remain permanently at 36 months (as opposed to 24 months as proposed by the House). The OIG made the following recommendations related to public transparency of survey and certification information: (1) CMS should expand information reported by accrediting organizations (AOs) to make it more comparable to the data reported by State agencies; (2) CMS should seek statutory authority to make information from AOs publicly available (on Hospice Compare or a similar resource) and, once authority is obtained, make them publicly available; and (3) CMS should include (on Hospice Compare or a similar resource) survey reports or a compilation of important survey findings from State agencies and make the information more readily available and accessible in a user-friendly way.  This data must be posted no later than October 1, 2022.

A few take-aways for Hospice Providers:

• Routine hospice survey frequency will remain permanently at 36 months.
• The legislation mandates a comprehensive surveyor training program – must be completed prior to being allowed to participate on a hospice surveying team.
• Special focus program for enforcement of requirements for those hospices that have substantially failed to meet program requirements and surveys shall be conducted not less than once every 6 months for hospices in the special focus program.
• More transparency as each state or local survey agency and each approved accreditation body must submit inspection reports, enforcement actions and any other information that the Secretary determines appropriate regarding hospice surveys.  The information must include (even for accreditation bodies) the Form CMS-2567. 
• More consistency in the application of survey results