HCANYS' Memo on CMS’ FY 2026 Hospice Final Rule Now Available
The Situation Report | August 18, 2025
The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has released its hospice final rule (CMS–1835-P) to update the Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 (October 1, 2025 through September 30, 2026) Medicare payment rates and the wage index for hospices serving Medicare beneficiaries.
The final rule is available here. Our comprehensive memo is available here.
CMS estimates a 2.6% ($750 million) market basket increase in national hospice payments for FY 2026 over FY 2025. CMS also updates the Routine Home Care (RHC), Continuous Home Care (CHC), Inpatient Respite Care (IRC) and General Inpatient Care (GIC) hospice Medicare rates for FY 2026.
HCANYS is very concerned that the final rule includes six decreases to New York’s fifteen Wage Index Core Based Statistical (CBSAs) that negatively impacts most, if not all, of our downstate hospice members. On top of this, HCANYS is also concerned that CMS’ market basket or inflationary update of 2.6 percent is wholly inadequate in allowing hospices to provide high quality services, given the continuing rise in costs that they are experiencing.
HCANYS will be including these concerns in our ongoing advocacy with New York’s Congressional Delegation that includes our numerous issues with CMS’ Home Health proposed rule for CY 2026.
HCANYS will update our hospice provider members as any additional information becomes available. For further information, contact Patrick Conole at (518) 810-0661 or