CMS finalizes hospice wage index, payment rates for FY 2018

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services yesterday issued a final rule updating Medicare’s hospice wage index, payment rates and cap amount for fiscal year 2018. The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 set the hospice market basket update at 1% for FY 2018, meaning hospices will generally see a 1% payment increase. The annual cap on overall payments to a hospice also will increase by 1%, as mandated by the Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation Act of 2014. The rule also finalizes eight hospice experience of care measures and outlines plans to publicly report initial data from the Hospice Quality Reporting Program later this month. For more information, see the CMS factsheet.