Center to Advance Palliative Care

What you're describing is indeed not uncommon. We find that most payers , including Medicare intermediaries, are not well-versed in the differences between hospice services and palliative services. Then again, why should we expect any different - after all, most clinicians in other specialties are hard-pressed to articulate the differences.
Our market intelligence has shown that hospices operating palliative care programs do better when the palliative care program is treated as a separate business unit, with a distinct revenue cycle function. Offline, I'd be happy to go into more detail (tcousounis@digital-action.com)
Tim Cousounis, MDvantage Palliative Care Group