Post-acute

HHS “may” let hospices use grants to offset fundraising losses.

HHS APPEARS POISED to let hospice providers use federal relief grants to offset fundraising and thrift store revenue they lost due to COVID-19, although the agency’s communication leaves room for interpretation.

HHS’ Health Resources and Services Administration chief wrote in a Dec. 2 letter to a hospice trade group that lost fundraising and thrift store revenue “may qualify as reimbursable lost revenue” under the Provider Relief Fund grant program.

HRSA Administrator Thomas Engels’ letter to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization was in response to its Nov. 17 request for clarification on whether providers could use their grant money to make up for that lost revenue. But his response still leaves a question mark for the trade group, which represents more than 4,000 hospice locations and 48 state hospice and palliative-care organizations.

“We see the ‘may’ as well,” said Judi Lund Person, NHPCO’s vice president of regulatory and compliance.

The “$64,000 question” is whether the open-ended letter is enough basis for hospice and palliative-care providers to go ahead and use grant money to replace lost fundraising and thrift store revenue, Lund Person said. Most chief financial officers she’s spoken with have said they will do so until they hear otherwise.

HHS has gone back and forth on its instructions to providers for recognizing Provider Relief Fund grants as revenue. Most recently, the agency in October said providers can keep the money up to the amount of their year-over-year revenue difference from 2019 to 2020. But NHPCO CEO Edo Banach pointed out in his letter that the October guidance did not address lost fundraising and thrift store revenue specifically.

HHS did not return a request for further clarification.

Engels’ letter directs providers to calculate lost revenue attributable to the pandemic by reporting revenue received from Medicare, Medicaid, commercial insurance and other sources for patient-care services.

The stipulation seems to be that hospice and palliative-care providers can only use the grant money to offset lost fundraising and thrift store revenue if that money goes toward patient care, Lund Person said. ●