S. 1936 — Improving Access to Transfusion Care for Hospice Patients Act of 2025

This section requires the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMI) to test, as one of the models selected under existing criteria, a payment model under which blood transfusions furnished to Medicare hospice beneficiaries are paid separately from the hospice all-inclusive per diem payment under section 1814(i) (i.e., at the fee-for-service rate otherwise applicable under Medicare Part A if not furnished as part of hospice care), with implementation not later than one year after enactment. (As background: The CMI tests innovative Medicare and Medicaid payment and service delivery models to reduce program expenditures while preserving or enhancing care quality; Medicare hospice payments currently bundle nearly all services into a per diem rate.) The section further directs the evaluation of this model to compare participating hospice patients to similar non-participating patients on specified metrics, including (1) chemotherapy services in the last 14 days of life; (2) hospital utilization in the last 30 days of life (i.e., emergency department visits, inpatient and observation stays including length of stay, and intensive care unit days); (3) days in hospice before end of life; and (4) blood transfusion metrics (i.e., number of hospice patients receiving transfusions versus similar non-hospice patients, average transfusion frequency, and total transfusions).