S.F. No. 687 makes a number of amendments to various laws governing or relating to hospice care.

Section 1 (144A.751, subdivision 1) modifies the hospice care bill of rights as follows:

• it limits the application of the bill of rights to the individual receiving services by excluding the current reference to the individual's family;
• it expands the right to know in advance of receiving care whether the services are covered by third-party payers by adding Medicare to the list of payers, and it deletes the right to know in advance the charges for services that will not be covered by Medicare and the charges the individual may have to pay;
• it replaces the current right to know what the charges are for services, no matter who will be paying, with the right to receive, upon request, a good-faith estimate of the third-party reimbursement the hospice provider expects to receive;
• it reorder the list of rights so that number 18 becomes number 15; and

• it adds to the list of exceptions for not providing ten days' advance notice of service termination cases where the recipient is no longer certified as terminally ill.

Section 2 (144A.755) requires the Commissioner of Health to mandate that hospice providers complete and submit a national data set survey to Hospice Minnesota as a condition of licensure.

Section 3 (383B.225, subdivision 5) modifies the statute governing mandatory death reports to the Hennepin County Medical Examiner. It requires the death of a person receiving hospice care to be reported if the person was not seen by a doctor within 180 days of death, rather than the 90 days currently specified.

Section 4 makes section 2 effective January 1, 2006.

DG:rdr

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