Hospice News July 30, 2021
Medicare Advantage beneficiaries in the last year of life transition to fee-for-service coverage at least twice as often as those who are expected to live longer. Health care costs associated with those patients were an estimated $422 million higher in 2016 than they would have been if they had stayed with their Medicare Advantage plans, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). In 2017, the added costs exceeded $490 million.
GAO analyzed Medicare disenrollment and mortality data for 2015 through 2018 and used claims data to estimate the relative costs between MA and fee-for-service. The agency excluded hospice payments from its comparison. Because payment for hospices almost always goes through the dedicated Medicare benefit, disenrollment wouldn’t...
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