Referral Resources for Hospice & Palliative Care

Referring eligible patients to Hospice Care often helps medical practices to transition from a high-intensity, reactive care model to a streamlined, collaborative one that reduces administrative burdens while maintaining professional engagement and reimbursement.

At Four Seasons, we serve you, as well as your patients and families, hoping to provide solutions for what’s most important to you.

Hospice Care Collaboration Reduces Your Team’s Workload, Improves Practice Efficiency, & Allows for Continued Reimbursement

Hospice acts as a “24/7 extension” of the referring practice, absorbing much of the labor-intensive management of end-of-life care, freeing you and your staff to serve more patients and positively impact your Quality Metrics.

• Hospice Provides Round-the-Clock Coverage Reducing Your After-Hours Calls.
  The Hospice team provides 24-hour on-call support, which dramatically reduces after-hours calls to the primary physician’s office or emergency triage.
• Hospice Handles Care Coordination, Which Improves Your Clinical Workflow
  Four Seasons’ interdisciplinary hospice team will coordinate your patient’s medical supplies, equipment (DME), and medications as well as helping with anxiety and other issues. This helps add time back in your day, and reduces calls.
• Hospice Care Collaboration Improves Your Quality Metrics
  By proactively managing symptoms in the home, hospice significantly lowers the rate of emergency room visits and hospital readmissions, which may improve patient satisfaction scores. This reduction also cuts out time-consuming discharge planning and follow-up work for the practice.
• Hospice Saves Time by Handling Difficult Conversations and Family Education
  Hospice teams can handle the intensive interactions of educating families on medication administration and daily care, having difficult conversations about goals of care and medication deprescribing to free up time for the providers, nurses, and other office staff.
• Hospice Collaboration Does Not Mean a Loss of Reimbursement
  Referring to hospice does not mean a “loss” of the patient from a billing perspective. Physicians may continue to be reimbursed for their professional services.
  • Attending Physician Billing: If a doctor is designated as the “attending physician” and is not an employee of the hospice, they can continue to bill Medicare Part B directly for professional services related to the terminal illness.
  • Billing Code: Use the GV modifier (e.g., CPT code + GV) to indicate services were provided as the attending physician for a hospice patient.
  • Unrelated Care: For any services or treatments provided for conditions unrelated to the terminal prognosis, physicians bill Medicare Part B as usual using the GW modifier.