A six-month moratorium on new home health and hospice agencies that provide Medicare services won’t have much of an impact in Maine, an advocacy group official said on Thursday.

Sara Ratcliffe, executive director of the Maine Alliance for Care at Home, which represents home health and hospice agencies, said the moratorium won’t affect existing providers, and new agencies don’t open often.

“Our biggest concern always is are patients going to continue to receive care they need and deserve, and the answer to that is, ‘Yes,'” Ratcliffe said. “If (the moratorium) extends for years then I could see where there could be a problem. But in this six-month time frame we will be OK.”

Vice President JD Vance, who was in Bangor on Thursday, has been highlighting “waste, fraud and abuse” cases in Medicare and Medicaid during recent appearances, arguing that it’s rampant in the programs. The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced the moratorium on Wednesday, citing examples of fraudulent billing across the country. Maine’s home health and hospice providers were not mentioned in the announcement.

Ratcliffe said there have been some cases of suspected fraud. The Trump administration this week announced that it was deferring $1.3 billion in Medicaid funding to California over fraud investigations that included hospice providers.

“Nothing makes us more angry than incidents of fraud because it gives all of us a bad name,” Ratcliffe said. “We would prefer CMS be targeted in their enforcement rather than a blanket moratorium that covers everyone.”

Kandyce Powell, executive director of the Maine Hospice Council, an advocacy group, said “there have been some bad actors across the country” but that she hasn’t heard of fraudulent activity among hospice operators in Maine. Powell said since the news broke on Wednesday, she’s been fielding calls from anxious families. She’s been advising them not to worry about programs closing in Maine because of the moratorium.

At MaineHealth Home Health and Hospice Service, “patients currently receiving care, as well as individuals newly referred for home health and hospice services, will continue to be served by our clinical team without disruption,” the health system said in a statement.

Lewiston-based Andwell Health Partners, which operates home health and hospice services, released a statement saying services for its patients won’t be disrupted by the moratorium.

“The overwhelming majority of providers are delivering compassionate, high-quality care in good faith every day,” Ken Albert, president and CEO of Andwell Health Partners, said in a statement. “We support targeted, data-driven approaches that remove bad actors while preserving access to essential services for the people who depend on care at home.”