The PPACA will soon tie a hospital’s Medicare reimbursement to whether that hospital’s Medicare patients need to be readmitted. If patients need to be readmitted within 30 days, the hospital loses money. Hospices are pitching their end-of-life care services as a way to circumvent that provision — hospitals send Medicare patients to hospices without having to worry about the financial repercussions of a Medicare readmission.
Rich Chesney, a hospice marketing specialist and the person who proposed this plan, said in the report it might be more beneficial if a hospital executive team hired people to talk to families about hospice options instead of a physician, who is more focused on not losing a patient.
However, the proposal has not sat well with some healthcare analysts and ethicists, who argue it goes against the intent of the PPACA and “warps the whole idea behind hospice” care, according to the report.
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