FY 2027 Hospice Payment Rates (Corrected)

Routine Home Care Is $236.33 for Days 1-60 and the Aggregate Cap Is $36,174.75

Rcmaxis Billing & Policy Update  ·  Posted October 8, 2026  ·  Effective: October 01, 2026 (implementation October 05, 2026)

Summary of the Rule or Edit Change

CMS issued Transmittal 13976 (Change Request 14557) on September 30, 2026. It rescinds and replaces Transmittal 13924, which CMS issued August 18, 2026, and it carries the corrected FY 2027 hospice payment rates, wage index and aggregate cap. The reason is a technical error in the final FY 2027 hospice wage index. CMS recalculated the wage index values for every CBSA and rural area, which changed the standardization factors and, in turn, the national rate for each level of care. A correction notice to the final rule appeared in the Federal Register the same day.

The payment update is 2.3%, which is the 3.2% inpatient hospital market basket increase less a 0.9 percentage point productivity adjustment. Hospices that don't submit the required quality data get a -1.7% update instead, because the quality penalty is 4 percentage points. The rates apply to care furnished from October 1, 2026 through September 30, 2027, and the implementation date for the new Pricer was October 5.

The hospice aggregate cap for the 2027 cap year, which runs October 1, 2026 through September 30, 2027, is $36,174.75. That's the FY 2026 amount of $35,361.44 raised by the 2.3% update, or $813.31 more per beneficiary. The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026 extended the rule that updates the cap by the hospice payment update rather than the CPI-U through accounting years ending before October 1, 2035.

Wage index reporting matters too. Claims need the CBSA code for the county where the care was delivered. Thirteen counties in Georgia, Idaho, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Puerto Rico use special five-digit 50xxx transition codes in FY 2027 because of the 5% cap on wage index decreases, and Medicare accepts those codes in the 50xxx range when they're reported with value code 61 or G8.

Action Required for Billing Teams

A hospice that serves 40 patients a day at the days 61+ rate is billing about $2.7 million a year, so a mismatch of even a few dollars per day adds up fast. Missing the quality submission is the most expensive version: at the days 61+ rate the gap is $7.29 a day, which across 40 patients is $106,434 a year, and it's $9.24 a day at the days 1-60 rate.

If you're also working on the new election statement addendum, our update on the hospice election statement addendum covers what changed on the paperwork side, and our guide to hospice and palliative care billing in 2026 walks through the claim.