Florida hospice advocacy

Protecting Florida’s Certificate of Need —
And Your Ability to Serve Patients

Florida’s CON process ensures communities have access to quality hospice care without market saturation that compromises patient outcomes.

Know the policy

What Is Certificate of Need?

Florida’s Certificate of Need (CON) program requires state approval before establishing new hospice programs or expanding service areas — a regulatory framework overseen by Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) that ensures new hospice providers demonstrate community need and financial sustainability before serving patients.

Quality Standards

Maintains quality standards by ensuring providers meet strict criteria before serving patients.

Patients First

Prevents market saturation that can lead to aggressive patient recruitment and fragmented care.

Sustainable Care

Protects patient choice by ensuring hospices remain financially viable to serve their communities.

Statewide Access

Ensures geographic coverage so rural and underserved areas have access to care.

Why con protection matters

Built to Protect

The People We Serve

Hospice services are delivered by a coordinated interdisciplinary team, available around the clock to provide care and support to patients and families. Every member of the team plays a specific and essential role.

Patients & Families

CON ensures your loved one receives care from established, qualified providers—not organizations cutting corners to capture market share. It protects against aggressive marketing tactics and ensures hospices focus on patient care, not patient acquisition.

Hospice Providers

CON allows you to build sustainable programs that serve your community long-term. It prevents destabilizing market forces that can compromise your ability to provide consistent, quality care—especially to Medicare and Medicaid patients.

Florida Communities

CON ensures every region has access to hospice care, including rural and underserved areas that might not be profitable without regulatory protection. It maintains the Medicare hospice benefit’s integrity and prevents fraud.

Where things stand today

The State of CON in Florida

Florida is one of 14 states that maintains CON requirements for hospice care. While CON has successfully protected quality care for decades, it faces ongoing threats:

Current Status:

  • Legislative session updates
  • Any active bills threatening CON
  • Recent AHCA rule changes
  • National policy discussions affecting state CON programs

Why CON Faces Threats: Some argue CON creates barriers to market entry. The evidence tells a different story. In states that eliminated hospice CON:

  • Market saturation led to aggressive patient recruitment and 
premature enrollment
  • Providers closed mid-care due to financial instability, disrupting 
patient services
  • For-profit entities cherry-picked profitable patients, reducing access for 
complex cases
  • Rural areas lost coverage as providers concentrated in urban markets
  • Medicare hospice benefit integrity was compromised

FHPCA advocates for data-driven policy that protects patients while ensuring access to quality care

Your membership at work

Your Voice in Tallahassee

FHPCA monitors, analyzes, and advocates on all CON-related policy developments. Here’s how we protect Florida’s hospice CON:

Legislative Monitoring We track every bill filed in the Florida Legislature that could impact CON requirements, providing early warning and analysis before threats gain momentum.

Regulatory Advocacy We work directly with AHCA on CON rule-making, ensuring hospice provider perspectives inform policy decisions and implementation.

Coalition Building We partner with patient advocacy groups, healthcare associations, and community organizations to build broad support for maintaining CON protections.

Data & Research We provide legislators and regulators with evidence demonstrating CON’s impact on quality, access, and patient outcomes—countering deregulation arguments with facts.

Member Mobilization When threats emerge, we equip members with talking points, contact information, and action steps to make their voices heard with their legislators.

“Most of us are specifically members to protect CON.”

— Provider Member