In This Issue: Hospice Cap Rule Bites the Dust Before Another Court; Decision-Making Issues – Advance Directives Q&A; and, From Russia, With Love.

Hospice Cap Rule Bites the Dust Before Another Court

By Jessica Lewis

Since our update to you in the November 2009 edition of EndNotes, a few more U.S. district courts have declared the hospice cap regulation invalid because it is inconsistent with the statute on calculating the annual hospice cap. (See Compassionate Care Hospice v. Sebelius, No. 09-28-C (W.D. Okla. June 7, 2010); Tri-County Hospice v. Sebelius, No. 09-407-RAW (E.D. Okla. March 8, 2010); Hospice of New Mexico LLC v. Sebelius, 691 F. Supp.2d. 1275 (D.N.M. 2010); Lion Health Services v. Sebelius, 689 F. Supp.2d. 849 (N.D. Tex. 2010).)...

...Decision-Making Issues – Advance Directives Q&A

In the November 2009 edition of EndNotes, we published a Q&A tailored specifically to assist hospice providers with common decisionmaking issues related to hospice patients (those with a medical condition that a physician has certified as incurable or irreversible and likely to result in death in a relatively short period of time). No Q&A can exhaust the plethora of unique issues a provider might face in dealing with advance directives made by its patients. The following series of questions and answers is intended to supplement the first series published in November 2009. This edition of EndNotes also includes a workplace poster designed to help your staff understand health care decision-making processes for those patients who cannot make or communicate their own decisions.....