Eli's Hospice Insider

Published on Fri Mar 01, 2013 PDF

Short hospice stays aren’t very useful to patients or payers, but they are a growing trend, according to the results of study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. An increasing number of patients are utilizing hospice services, but only in the final days of their life and after multiple hospitalizations and intensive care unit stays, the study finds.

These findings are troublesome because not only do they indicate a gross underutilization of valuable end-of-life care via hospice, but they also undercut the money-saving potential of hospice care, Politico reports. The study in JAMA is at http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1568250.