Hospice care gets new quality metrics, but the old ones are still there

Medicare is adding new quality measures for hospice providers, including how often patients visit the emergency room and how many get opioids without other pain relief. However, it is not removing any of the existing measures, which means providers will report on more things without any old requirements going away.

For years, hospice providers have reported on a set of quality measures that Medicare uses to assess their performance. Adding new measures without removing old ones means more administrative burden for providers. It also means Medicare is trying to get a clearer picture of patient outcomes, especially around pain management and emergency care, without letting go of its previous data collection.