Hospice Medicaid rates in New Hampshire stand out on the hourly level of care. New Hampshire Medicaid pays $74.56 an hour for hospice continuous home care, which ranks 3rd of 16 states that publish a comparable hourly rate and sits 12.8% above the national median of $66.11. Only Oregon ($80.47) and Washington ($77.54) pay more per hour.
The state's daily rates for the other three levels of care all took effect on 2026-10-01: $192.30 for routine home care, $540.12 for inpatient respite and $1,219.85 for general inpatient care. Every one of them sits above the national median. This page explains what the four rates mean for a New Hampshire hospice, how they interact with local wages and managed care, and how to use them in planning. Each figure is compiled from official state Medicaid publications and linked to its source document on the New Hampshire Medicaid rates hub.
| Level of care | Code | New Hampshire rate | National median |
|---|---|---|---|
| Routine home care | 0651 | $192.30 a day | $186.66 a day |
| Continuous home care | 0652 | $74.56 an hour | $66.11 an hour |
| Inpatient respite | 0655 | $540.12 a day | $530.15 a day |
| General inpatient care | 0656 | $1,219.85 a day | $1,157.99 a day |
The four rows are the four levels of hospice care that Medicaid pays for. A hospice does not choose one; it moves a patient between them as needs change, and each day of a stay is billed at exactly one level. The table therefore describes a whole payment system rather than four separate products.
What sets New Hampshire apart is consistency. Many states pay well on one level and poorly on another. Here, none of the four levels falls below the national median, which gives a hospice room to deliver whichever level a patient actually needs without one of them becoming a money-losing service.
Hospice in New Hampshire is billed on institutional revenue codes rather than the physician procedure codes most practices use. Each level of care has its own code and its own unit.
Daily levels
Routine home care (code 0651), inpatient respite (code 0655) and general inpatient care (code 0656) are paid per day. One day of care equals one unit, regardless of how many visits the team makes that day. That is why visit planning, not billing, drives profitability on these levels.
The hourly level
Continuous home care (code 0652) is the only level paid by the hour. The comparison here is made at the registered nurse level, because continuous care must be predominantly nursing time. Hours are billed only for days when the patient is in a crisis that requires continuous care at home.
Continuous home care is the crisis level of hospice: hours of predominantly nursing care delivered in the patient's home to keep them out of the hospital. New Hampshire pays it at $74.56 an hour.
At 3rd of 16, New Hampshire is in the top group with Oregon, Washington, South Dakota ($71.92) and Massachusetts ($70.00). The lowest-paying states are Georgia ($62.08), Kansas ($60.00) and West Virginia ($59.29).
For a provider, the practical effect is that crisis care is more workable to staff here than in most states. Continuous care is expensive to deliver because it requires a nurse on site for long stretches, often at short notice and outside normal hours. When the hourly rate is weak, hospices tend to transfer patients to an inpatient setting instead. New Hampshire's rate makes it easier to keep a dying patient at home during a symptom crisis, which is usually what patients and families want.
Routine home care is paid at $192.30 a day. It covers the great majority of hospice days, so it is the single biggest driver of a New Hampshire hospice's Medicaid revenue.
The national median is $186.66, so New Hampshire pays above the middle of the country. The state is not part of the routine home care ranking, but the comparison with the median is the one that matters for planning: each routine day earns a little more here than in a typical state, and across a full year of patient days that small gap adds up.
Because routine home care is a flat daily amount, its value depends on how long patients stay and how intensively they are visited. A short stay with frequent nursing visits in the first and last days earns the same daily rate as a quiet mid-stay day with a single aide visit. Hospices that track cost per day by stage of the stay understand their margin far better than those that only look at the rate.
Inpatient respite pays $540.12 a day for short inpatient stays that give family caregivers a break. The national median is $530.15. Respite is a small share of most hospice budgets, but it matters for keeping families able to continue caring at home.
General inpatient care pays $1,219.85 a day for symptom management that cannot be done at home. The national median is $1,157.99. A hospice that contracts with a hospital or nursing facility for inpatient beds pays that facility out of this rate, so the margin depends on the contracted bed price as much as on the Medicaid rate itself.
Both inpatient levels in New Hampshire sit above their national medians. For a hospice negotiating with an inpatient facility, the published rate sets the ceiling on what it can afford to pass through.
Federal occupational wage data for May 2025 shows New Hampshire's hospice workforce earning above the national median in every role we track.
| Role | New Hampshire median wage | US median wage |
|---|---|---|
| Registered nurse | $47.93 an hour | $46.90 an hour |
| Home health / personal care aide | $18.64 an hour | $17.21 an hour |
| Healthcare social worker | $37.63 an hour | $32.63 an hour |
| Chaplain | $31.35 an hour | $29.24 an hour |
The most direct comparison is with continuous home care. Continuous care is mostly nursing time, and a New Hampshire RN's median wage of $47.93 sits beneath the $74.56 hourly rate with room left for supervision, travel, benefits and on-call coverage.
Routine home care is harder. The single $192.30 daily rate has to cover nurse, aide, social worker and chaplain visits plus drugs and supplies related to the terminal illness. With every role paid above the national median, a New Hampshire hospice's margin on routine days depends heavily on visit frequency, travel time across rural service areas and how well the interdisciplinary team is scheduled.
New Hampshire runs most Medicaid enrollment through New Hampshire Medicaid Care Management (MCM), alongside traditional fee-for-service billed through DHHS and the NH MMIS. We count 5 plans in the state's Medicaid program. The managed care plans named in state publications are AmeriHealth Caritas New Hampshire, NH Healthy Families and WellSense Health Plan.
For hospice, the rule is simple: the state sets the rate plans pay. That is a meaningful protection. In many service lines in New Hampshire, such as physician services and home health, plans negotiate their own rates and the published rate only applies out of network. Hospice is treated differently, so the rates on this page are the reference point whether a patient is in fee-for-service or enrolled with a plan.
What still varies by plan is administration: enrollment and credentialing, notice of election paperwork, claim submission rules and payment timing. A hospice serving plan members should confirm those terms in each plan contract. The line-by-line rules for every service are on the New Hampshire managed care page.
Many hospice patients in New Hampshire live in nursing facilities, and the two payment systems sit side by side. Nursing facilities are paid directly by the state, outside managed care, and the state has issued several nursing facility rate appendices in 2026, including a revised Appendix A effective 2026-07-01.
That matters for hospices that serve facility residents, because the facility's own rate and the hospice rate together shape how care is coordinated. Home and community-based services and personal care are also paid directly by the state, while home health is negotiated by plans. A hospice that also runs home health or works closely with personal care agencies faces different payment rules on each line, which is worth mapping before a patient moves between services.
New Hampshire updates hospice rates each federal fiscal year, which starts on October 1. The current rates are effective 2026-10-01 and come from the state's FY 27 Hospice Rates publication.
The state's rate history shows revisions within a year as well. For FY 24, it issued an FY 24 Hospice Fee Schedule Compliant and Non Compliant 2nd Revision and an FY 24 Hospice Rate Letter 2nd Revision, published 2024-01-03 for rates effective 2023-10-01. A revision issued months after the effective date can change what is owed on claims already paid.
What to watch
- The fee schedule is published in compliant and non-compliant versions, so a hospice should check which column applies to it before reconciling payments.
- Mid-year revisions can be retroactive to October 1; keep remittances for the full year until the final revision is out.
- Revisions often arrive as rate letters rather than new fee schedules, so watch both document types.
New Hampshire's hospice rates are best read against the national leaders. New York pays the most for routine home care at $317.60 a day, followed by Massachusetts ($231.13), Maine ($223.84), Rhode Island ($222.38) and New Jersey ($219.21). New Hampshire's $192.30 sits between that New England group and the median.
On the inpatient levels, Oregon leads respite at $629.83 and general inpatient care at $1,354.60. At the bottom, Arkansas pays $80.36 for routine home care, $212.93 for respite and $449.54 for general inpatient care.
The pattern is that New Hampshire is a strong hourly payer and a solid daily payer. It does not match its New England neighbours on routine home care, but it outpaces most of the country on continuous care. For organisations that operate across state lines, the nearby Maine Medicaid rates hub and the other New England state hubs show how each neighbour's full schedule compares.
Published hospice rates are most useful when they are turned into decisions.
- Budget by level of care. Project patient days at each level and multiply by the matching rate. Routine days dominate volume; continuous and inpatient days dominate per-day cost.
- Price inpatient contracts. When negotiating beds with a hospital or nursing facility, start from the $1,219.85 general inpatient and $540.12 respite rates and work backwards to the price you can pay.
- Staff crisis care deliberately. At $74.56 an hour, continuous home care can support a dedicated on-call nursing pool rather than ad hoc overtime.
- Reconcile every October. New rates take effect on October 1, and revisions can follow; check paid claims against the current schedule.
- Benchmark against peers. Compare your cost per day with the state rate and with neighbouring states before expanding into a new area.
Rates on this page are compiled from official state Medicaid publications, and each rate links to its source document. The current hospice rates come from the state's FY 27 Hospice Rates publication, and earlier rates from the FY 24 Hospice Rate Letter 2nd Revision and the compliant and non-compliant fee schedule revision.
The hospice figures here are a small slice of all 26,581 current New Hampshire Medicaid rates, which span 111 service categories and 12 programs. The national hospice Medicaid rates by state page covers all four levels across every state we track. Our methodology explains how daily and hourly hospice rates are compared, and pricing describes access to the full dataset and rate history.