Hospice News December 9, 2025
Hospice margins are falling despite record-high utilization, according to data from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC).
The commission has released its draft recommendations to Congress, repeating its annual call to eliminate hospice payment rate increases in future years.
“For fiscal year, 2027, Congress should eliminate the update to the 2026 Medicare base payment rate for hospice,” MedPAC indicated in its draft recommendations.
However, the numbers accompanying the recommendation show that providers are facing margin compression with nonprofits bearing the brunt, according to a slide deck from the commission’s recent meeting.
The average Medicare fee-for-service margin for hospices fell to 8% in 2023, down from 9.8% in 2022 and 14.2% in 2020, according to MedPAC. Among for-profit providers, the average...
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