NEW YORK — The Trump administration announced a nationwide six-month freeze on new Medicare enrollments by hospice and home health agencies as part of an expanded fraud-busting initiative in federal health programs. The moratorium will temporarily stop all new hospice and home health providers from signing up for reimbursement from Medicare, according to a news release.

Existing hospice and home health care providers will continue to operate as usual under the six-month pause. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said it will intensify targeted investigations, deploy advanced data analytics, and accelerate the removal of hospice and home health care providers suspected of fraudulent activity.

"We've seen systemic and deeply troubling fraud in the hospice and home health space, with bad actors exploiting some of our most vulnerable Medicare patients and stealing money from the American taxpayer," said Dr. Mehmet Oz, Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. "Today we're shutting the door on fraud—preventing new bad actors from entering Medicare while we aggressively identify, investigate, and remove those already exploiting them," Oz said.

The move is related to efforts by Vice President JD Vance's anti-fraud task force, set up by Republican President Donald Trump to crack down on potential misuse of public funds. The Trump administration contends that the freeze and other actions will help prevent potential fraud in Medicaid and Medicare and preserve funding and resources for people most in need. Several alleged fraud schemes have been prosecuted in the hospice and home health care categories.

"A brief moratorium gives the administration time to crack down on true fraud and prevent new fraudulent entities from popping up," said Tricia Neumann, Senior Vice President and Executive Director for the Program on Medicare Policy at KFF. President Bill Clinton's administration previously imposed a temporary moratorium on home health agencies.

CMS suspended payments to hundreds of hospice and home care agencies in Los Angeles over alleged fraud and issued a six-month moratorium on suppliers of durable medical equipment, prosthetics, orthotics and certain other supplies in Medicare. The agency also announced it would require all 50 states to share how they planned to revalidate some of their Medicaid providers.

The administration has approached at least five states with investigations into potential health care fraud and halted $243 million in Medicaid payments to Minnesota over fraud concerns. In April, CMS acknowledged that it made an error in figures it used to help justify a fraud probe in New York.