CMS adds advance care planning as a required hospital quality measure

Full analysis

Starting with the FY 2030 payment determination, CMS will require hospitals to report on an Advance Care Planning electronic clinical quality measure — a standardized tool tracking whether hospitals document patients' wishes about end-of-life care. Hospitals that fail to meet quality reporting requirements face a one-quarter reduction in their annual Medicare payment update, so this adds real financial weight to the requirement. The same measure will be adopted for the eleven cancer hospitals exempt from standard Medicare payment rules, with voluntary reporting in FY 2030 and mandatory reporting beginning FY 2031. For patients, this means hospitals will face increasing pressure to have documented advance care planning conversations.