Posted on Thursday, July 23, 2015 2:49 PM
CMS recently announced the names of more than 140 hospice programs across the country that have been selected to participate in the Medicare Care Choices Model (MCCM). In 2014, a Request for Proposals (RFP) for the MCCM was issued with the intention that selected programs would be announced in the fall of 2014 and start delivering services on January 1, 2015. However, due to an enthusiastic response from the hospice industry, review of the applications took longer than anticipated. The hospice industry has been awaiting the release of information about the project for a number of months. Now, CMS has decided to expand the project from the planned 30 sites, and anticipates January 1, 2016 as the start date for a portion of the projects. The projects will conclude on December 31, 2020. The goals of the MCCM project are to:
- Evaluate whether eligible Medicare and dually eligible beneficiaries would elect to receive supportive care services typically provided by hospice if they were able to also receive curative care, and
- Determine whether providing both palliative and curative care concurrently impacts care quality and patient and family satisfaction.
CMS anticipates that as many as 150,000 beneficiaries will participate. In order to qualify, patients must be eligible for hospice services and have been diagnosed with one of a select number of conditions. Under the MCCM project, the requirement that terminally ill patients forego their right to curative care for terminal conditions would be waived. It is believed that many terminally ill patients do not enter hospice because they want to continue curative care. For more information about the MCCM model, click here. Click here to read more from NAHC.
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