A new law including parts of Congressman Tom Reed’s (R-N.Y.) HOSPICE Act was recently signed by President Barack Obama and will help families gain access to better hospice care.
The law, known as the Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation (IMPACT) Act, features Reed’s Hospice Opportunities for Supporting Patients with Integrity and Care Evaluations (HOSPICE) Act.
Reed’s bipartisan piece of legislature, originally passed by the House this past September, will enhance access to quality hospice care and offer hospice providers the necessary tools they need to effectively do their jobs.
Hospice centers will now be more focused on the changing needs of patients as the current 6 to 8 year recertification cycle has been changed to a 3-year timeframe. The act will also see that the people most in need of hospice care are supported since Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will now be able to conduct a review of hospice programs that obtain a threshold of hospice care patients for more than 180 days.
“I’m excited that the President signed the Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation Act of 2014 (IMPACT Act) into law,” Reed said. “This law will put fair accountability and transparency measures in place, and it is the right thing to do for our fellow Americans that face those hard decisions as we deal with health care at the end of our lives.”
In a recent press release, National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization CEO and president Donald Schumacher called the HOSPICE Act “common-sense legislation that preserves the Medicare hospice benefit for future generations.”