Staff Reports
A new report from Florida TaxWatch — Florida’s Certificate of Need (CON) Program Delivers High-Quality Hospice Care — shows the state’s competitive CON process for Hospice care is a key reason the Sunshine State ranks near the top in nearly all categories, reduces fraud, ensures rural access and saves taxpayers money.
Key takeaways from the report:
— The quality of hospice services in Florida surpasses the quality demonstrated in many other states.
— California effectively illustrates the risks of amending or repealing a hospice CON program. California has more than one thousand hospice providers, and state auditors found that the state is likely experiencing large-scale hospice fraud.
— The California Attorney General estimates that in Los Angeles County alone, hospice agencies overbilled Medicare by $105 million.
— The CON competitive batching cycle is particularly important for securing high-quality hospice providers. The marketplace has winners and losers, and the state uses its CON program to protect especially vulnerable consumers from bad practices like those in California.
— Florida has the highest average nursing minutes and average minutes with a home health aide.
— In contrast with California, Florida’s CON program creates an intentionally developed network of hospice providers. The CON program presents Florida with the opportunity to evaluate the hospice service provider’s business plan as well as to limit the number of providers, making it easier for the state to survey and monitor their performance.
— Florida’s CON model permits the state to ensure that the expansion of the number of hospice providers is orderly and in response to a demonstrated need for additional hospice providers. Repeal of the CON program is likely to result in increases in the number of providers far more than demonstrated needs. Absent additional staff and operational funding, the state will have a tough time monitoring the performance of new providers, so the repeal of CON will necessarily increase the size and costs of state government. The repeal of CON also increases the likelihood of waste, fraud and abuse, as was observed in California.
The bottom line: Florida’s CON program works.
