CMS Extends Nationwide Freeze on New Medicare Hospice and Home Health Enrollment for Six Months to Combat Fraud
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced on November 12 that it will extend its nationwide moratoria on new Medicare enrollments for hospices and home health agencies for an additional six months, to protect beneficiaries and taxpayer dollars from fraud, waste, and abuse.
CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said real progress has been made over the past six months, but fraud in hospice and home health persists and the work is not finished, adding that Medicare beneficiaries deserve protection from bad actors and taxpayers need to know the programs they rely on are not being bled dry by fraudsters.
The initial moratoria began on May 13, 2026, preventing potentially fraudulent operators from entering and exploiting Medicare. CMS said the pause allows it to conduct targeted investigations and deploy advanced data analytics to identify hospice and home health providers suspected of fraud and remove them from the Medicare program.
Unlike the May 2026 moratoria, the extensions will allow currently enrolled hospices and home health agencies to add new practice locations within their existing enrollment. The extensions do not affect existing enrollments or prevent currently enrolled providers from continuing to deliver services. They continue to cover new applications for initial enrollment and certain changes in majority ownership, and apply nationwide.
CMS said that in October its site visit teams conducted a two-day operation targeting home health agencies and hospices in California that resulted in 145 revocations of providers associated with more than $703 million in Medicare and Medicaid payments. The Calendar Year 2027 Home Health Prospective Payment System Final Rule also tightened enrollment rules, including making revocations retroactive to the date of noncompliance and adding grounds for denial or revocation.
(Source: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services)
Source: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
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