Hospice of Humboldt offers guidance as hospice fraud fears spread locally

California’s hospice fraud crisis has reached Humboldt County in the form of a trust problem: donors and families are now asking whether local providers could be swept into the same suspicion that has engulfed parts of the state. The pressure comes as California has become the epicenter of a scheme that has cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, with 2,605 hospice license applications in 2022, 93% of them based in Los Angeles and Southern California and 72% linked to shared addresses.

For families trying to tell a legitimate provider from a phony one, Hospice of Humboldt CEO Dianne Keating points them to Medicare’s Care Compare website as the first check. The federal site, now on Medicare.gov, is the official public reporting tool for hospice quality data and replaced the original Hospice Compare in 2020. It lets patients, caregivers and families compare Medicare-certified hospices side by side on quality of care, volume of services, caregiver feedback and whether families would recommend the hospice.

That matters in a field that CMS defines as a comprehensive palliative-care program for terminally ill patients and their families. Once a beneficiary elects hospice, they waive curative treatment for the terminal illness, which makes the decision deeply personal and easy to exploit if a provider is not legitimate.

Hospice of Humboldt is trying to make the distinction clear on its own terms. The nonprofit provides end-of-life care, palliative care and bereavement services from its Eureka campus and in the community, part of a model that local leaders say is built on accountability rather than billing volume. Keating and Rep. Jared Huffman have both used the moment to reinforce confidence in organizations that are doing hospice work the right way, and Huffman has urged families to use the federal comparison tool before choosing a provider.

The statewide backdrop remains stark. A California State Auditor report found the number of hospice agencies in Los Angeles County had increased 1,500% since 2010, prompting California’s licensure moratorium on Jan. 1, 2022. The state says it has revoked more than 280 hospice licenses since then. Federal regulators have also moved in: in December 2025, CMS put newly enrolling hospices in California, Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Georgia and Ohio under a provisional period of enhanced oversight because of fraud, waste and abuse concerns and rapid growth in those states. In April 2026, CMS proposed additional transparency measures aimed at exposing suspicious billing and care-delivery patterns.

For Humboldt County, the lesson is practical and immediate: verify certification, compare quality scores and check whether a hospice is listed on Medicare’s official site before signing anything. In a market where fraud has shaken confidence statewide, that basic step is now part of protecting some of the region’s most vulnerable families.