Improving Access to Transfusion Care for Hospice Patients Act of 2025

This bill, the Improving Access to Transfusion Care for Hospice Patients Act of 2025, would require the CMS Innovation Center (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, CMI) to test a new payment model: paying for blood transfusions separately from the Medicare hospice all-inclusive per diem payment. By creating a separate payment for transfusions (instead of bundling them into the hospice per diem), the model aims to determine how separate billing affects care at the end of life. The testing must be established within one year of enactment, and the bill directs the CMI to evaluate the model by comparing outcomes with similar patients not in the model, using specific end-of-life and transfusion-related metrics. In short, this bill would shift transfusion billing for hospice patients from being included in the daily hospice payment to being paid as a separate Medicare Part A/B item, and it would require rigorous evaluation of the policy’s effects on care and utilization.