US · guidance
CMS Pub. 100-02, ch. 9, § 40.4
Core Services
With the exception of physician services, substantially all core services must be provided
directly by hospice employees on a routine basis. These services must be provided in a
manner consistent with acceptable standards of practice. The following are hospice core
services:
• Physician services.
• Nursing services, (routinely available and/or on call on a 24-hour basis, 7 days a
week) provided by or under the supervision of an RN functioning within a plan of
care developed by the hospice IDG in consultation with the patient’s attending
physician, if the patient has one.
• Medical social services by a qualified social worker under the direction of a
physician.
• Counseling (including, but not limited to, bereavement, dietary, and spiritual
counseling) with respect to care of the terminally ill individual and adjustment to
death. The hospice must make bereavement services available to the family and
other individuals identified in the bereavement plan of care up to 1 year following
the death of the patient.
The hospice may contract for physician services as specified in the Conditions of
Participation.
History
(Rev. 141, Issued: 03-02-11, Effective: 01-01-11: Implementation: 03-23-11)
Provenance
- Source
- cms.gov
- Retrieved
- 2026-08-25
- Edition
- iom-2026-08-25
- Content hash
bef2746ea5d2be0467d2c0a480d8efe076724fa436d6a81ad81b6a499b53b937
The link goes to the issuing authority’s own document — the one we read to produce this record. Where a source publishes whole titles rather than sections, your browser may need a moment to jump to the provision.
Unofficial copy of government-published law, reproduced from official sources with full provenance. Not an official publication; verify against official sources before relying on it in a filing. Records in the 'guidance' corpus, and only that corpus, are sub-regulatory (interpretive guidelines, survey procedures) and are not binding law. Validity bounds follow each jurisdiction's declared temporalBasis.