[funlovincutie]

Has anyone heard anything about the proposed cuts regarding Medicare reimbursement of hospiace care and services. I went to this website and was reading about it and how to take action. As a brand new hospice nurse I was unsure how this would affect my patients.

Thanks,

http://capwiz.com/nhpco/home

[rnboysmom]

Any cut threatens the benefit. Hospice is one service that is particularly vulnerable to economy fluctuations, rising transportation costs, soaring medication prices and nursing shortages to name a few. If the proposed rise in reimbursement drops from 3% to 1.9 %(about what the newest cuts are proposed), inflation will outpace the cost of reimbursement--meaning we will have less real dollars to care for patients than the year before. Add to this the new COP's that are coming out that include QAPI and several other requirements to increase quality of care, and you have a mess. I believe that most hospices are already doing QAPI in some form,as we are all continually working to better our care and our companies, but, if you are not a part of a large corporation that has a department set aside to work on this, you have to develop a system (that includes time and money). We will be all be faced with more work, more regulation, and less dollars to accomplish this. Be proactive----write your congressmen, your senators and anybody else that could make a difference. The increase in biologicals alone will eat the cost of the proposed increase, not to mention the cost of soaring gas prices