Eli's Hospice Insider

Hospice News:

2 More Inpatient Facilities Close

The trend of shuttering inpatient units continues.

Example #1: Family Hospice & Palliative Care, part of the UPMC health system based in Pittsburgh, will shut down its 12-year-old hospice inpatient unit in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania, by the end of April, reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

The hospice inpatient units in Mt. Lebanon and Lawrenceville half been only about half-full in recent years, so UPMC is closing one, an official told the newspaper. Scaling back residential hospice settings has been a recent national trend, she said.

More than a year ago, Allegheny Health closed its nine-bed inpatient hospice unit at West Penn Hospital in Pittsburgh, the newspaper points out. Both health systems cited a preference for hospice care at home in the closings.

Example #2: Community Health Professionals is shutting down its inpatient hospice center in Van Wert, reports limaohio.com. CHP, which serves 15 counties, will continue to offer home care and hospice services in the area and inpatient services in Defiance.

“We have been blessed for the past decade to be able to provide families a local inpatient service that’s typically found only in much larger cities, but costs no longer allow us to support both methods of hospice care,” a CHP official said.  

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