The Trump administration will block new home healthcare and hospice providers from enrolling in Medicare for at least the next six months, a nationwide pause that takes aim at a sector where federal officials say fraud has spread too far. The moratorium will temporarily bar new providers in those categories from signing up for Medicare reimbursement, but it will not affect companies already registered.
The move lands on May 13, 2026, and it puts the federal government’s fraud crackdown squarely on one of Medicare’s most expensive corners. In 2024, 1.8 million Medicare beneficiaries received hospice care at a cost of $28.3 billion, a sum that has made hospice and home health billing a longstanding target for investigators searching for improper claims.
CMS said the pause is being imposed because of concerns about widespread fraud. The administration official who described the plan said the moratorium will also give CMS time to account for hospice and home health expenditures under the Medicare program and write additional guidance. was first to report the pause.
The decision is unusual because CMS has used enrollment freezes before, but only in specific places when staff suspected fraud tied to those locations. In 2013, the agency barred new providers based in Florida’s Miami-Dade County and several counties in Illinois. This time, the restriction applies across the country, a broader response that CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz did not explain with specific evidence when reporters asked why the administration believed a nationwide block was needed instead of a local one.
The new moratorium is part of Vice President JD Vance’s anti-fraud task force, which is aimed at cracking down on healthcare scams. The federal government has spent years trying to stop fraudulent Medicare payments in hospice and home healthcare, but past efforts have relied on narrower county-level pauses. The scale of this step suggests the administration believes the problem is not confined to a few hot spots, even if officials have not laid out the proof behind that judgment.
Stephen Lee, who has tracked hospice abuse cases, warned that a blanket enrollment ban would not solve the problem on its own. “It would be a mistake to think that this tool alone will work,” he said. For patients and legitimate providers already in the system, the immediate impact is limited. For new operators hoping to enter Medicare, the door is closing for at least six months, and the government is betting that a pause now will buy time to sort out who should be trusted later.
