Concerns About Costs and Misuse Rise With Hospice Care

Concerns About Costs and Misuse Rise With Hospice Care - NYTimes.com: Over the 28 years that Medicare has reimbursed providers for hospice services, it has been praised for giving critical medical and emotional support to dying patients and their families. When properly used — that is, at the very end of life — hospice care also has saved the government money. Providing dying patients with palliative care in their own homes, or in a hospice facility or nursing home, is far less expensive than continuing to order up futile medical treatments, studies have shown.

Indeed, advocates say more patients should be receiving hospice services earlier in the course of their illness. The median time spent in hospice care now is just 17 days. But as hospice has moved into the mainstream — it is now serving 1.1 million Medicare patients a year — concerns about excessive costs and misuse have mounted.