Hospice Insights: The Law and Beyond

AI tools are already showing up in hospice operations whether organizations have formal policies for them or not—and the compliance and liability questions are emerging just as quickly. In the second part of this two-part series, Husch Blackwell’s Bryan Nowicki and Taylor Crossley break down what the legal exposure looks like across clinical documentation, vendor relationships, and billing, and they take hospice leaders through concrete steps for building AI governance to stay ahead of associated risks.Listen to Part 1

AI tools are already showing up in hospice operations whether organizations have formal policies for them or not—and the compliance and liability questions are emerging just as quickly. In this two-part series, Husch Blackwell’s Bryan Nowicki and Taylor Crossley break down what the legal exposure looks like across clinical documentation, vendor relationships, and billing, and they take hospice leaders through concrete steps for building AI governance to stay ahead of associated risks.

CMS’s CY 2027 Home Health Proposed Rule tucks a sweeping set of Medicare provider enrollment changes inside what is nominally a routine payment rule, expanding the grounds on which CMS can deny or revoke a provider’s enrollment. In this episode, Husch Blackwell’s Bryan Nowicki and Andrew Brenton unpack several of the rule’s most consequential proposals, including new denial and revocation grounds and retroactive revocation effective dates. They also discuss why home health agencies and hospices should be paying close attention as the rule moves toward finalization.

CMS’s efforts to crush fraud in the hospice space have commanded the headlines and the attention of many. Less publicized efforts on behalf of hospices in the federal courts, however, have resulted in several rulings favoring hospices. In particular, the federal courts are starting to recognize that hospices deserve the benefit of the doubt when it comes to prognosticating a six-month life expectancy. In this episode, Bryan Nowicki talks with Joe Diedrich and Zaina Niles about those court cases and what they mean for the hospice community.

Hospice providers are no strangers to sensitive patient situations, but a subpoena or other third-party request for patient records can quickly raise complex legal and compliance challenges. In this episode, Husch Blackwell’s Bryan Nowicki and Taylor Crossley provide a practical roadmap for navigating those requests. They discuss the HIPAA framework governing legal process disclosures, the types of demands hospice providers often encounter, and how state privacy laws can affect the analysis—and offer guidance for avoiding common compliance pitfalls when responding to requests for patient information.