Medicare halts enrollment of new hospice, home health providers

Politics Medicare halts enrollment of new hospice, home health providers The six-month pause is part of Trump administration’s efforts to crackdown on health care fraud Manage alerts for this article Email this article Share this article By O. Rose BroderickMay 13, 2026 Disability in Health Care Reporting Fellow O. Rose Broderick[email protected]O.

Rose Broderick reports on the health policies and technologies that govern people with disabilities’ lives. Before coming to STAT, she worked at WNYC’s Radiolab and Scientific American, and her story debunking a bogus theory about transgender kids was nominated for a 2024 GLAAD Media Award. You can reach Rose on Signal at rosebroderick.11.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Wednesday placed a moratorium on new hospice and home health agency providers in a bid to “crush” on fraudulent businesses. The six-month pause is the latest effort from the Trump administration to end “fraud, waste, and abuse” in federal health care spending, as it threatened a two-year licensing freeze for new providers of home and community-based services in Minnesota in January and instituted a similar nationwide halt on durable medical equipment suppliers in February. Advertisement “We’ve seen systemic and deeply troubling fraud in the hospice and home health space, with bad actors exploiting some of our most vulnerable Medicare patients and stealing money from the American taxpayer,” said CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz.

“This is about protecting patients, restoring integrity, and safeguarding taxpayer dollars.” Hospices, in particular, have been a focus for Oz. The former television star has spent 2026 visiting “hotbeds” for fraud around the country and filming drive-by videos of purportedly bad actors. CMS has already suspended $70 million in payments to 773 hospices and 23 home health agencies suspected of fraud in Los Angeles.

And while some critics have questioned whether administration officials have exaggerated the extent of the malfeasance — the administration recently admitted that it dramatically overinflated the amount of New Yorkers receiving home care — there is some evidence that new hospice providers have rapidly entered the industry in recent years. Advertisement The number of hospice providers grew an average of 7.8% per year nationally between 2019 and 2023, according to the latest report from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, a nonpartisan independent legislative branch agency that advises Congress on Medicare. In a rapidly aging country, hospice has become a sizable portion of Medicare spending.

More than 1.8 million Medicare beneficiaries received hospice services in 2024, with expenditures reaching $28.3 billion, according to MedPAC. During the pause, CMS aims to ramp up its investigations into hospice and home health agency providers suspected of committing fraud, using new data techniques, according to an agency press release. It also says the moratorium will not end or halt current enrollments from hospice patients and that existing providers will still be able to provide services.

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Rose Broderick Disability in Health Care Reporting Fellow O. Rose Broderick reports on the health policies and technologies that govern people with disabilities’ lives. Before coming to STAT, she worked at WNYC’s Radiolab and Scientific American, and her story debunking a bogus theory about transgender kids was nominated for a 2024 GLAAD Media Award.

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