Abstract
Patients with terminal illnesses often do not take advantage of hospice services. Those who do tend to enter hospice care very near the end of life. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has identified the requirement that hospice patients give up “curative care” as a major barrier preventing early use of hospice. The Medicare Care Choices Model (MCCM) is designed to address this problem by allowing patients with terminal diagnoses to receive hospice care without giving up curative care. Testing of the model began in January 2016 at 70 sites across the US. Almost immediately, conflicts between the model’s eligibility requirements and its aims became apparent. Further problems emerged in the realms of data collection, ordering of medical supplies, and the mismatch between workload and reimbursement. This presentation is based on experiences in the first four months of the MCCM at one of the test sites, Compassionate Care Hospice of Athens, GA, with input from a discussion group created for other participating sites.