Trends in Contracting and Common Ownership Between Hospice Agencies and Nursing Homes.

BACKGROUND: In recent years, policymakers have paid particular attention to the emergence of a robust for-profit hospice sector and increased hospice use by nursing home residents. Previous research has explored financial incentives for nursing home-hospice use, but there has been limited research on nursing home-hospice partnerships and none on the extent of nursing home-hospice common ownership. OBJECTIVE: To describe trends in nursing home-hospice contracting and common ownership and to identify potential tradeoffs in care provided by nursing homes and hospice agencies that share common ownership. RESEARCH DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study of nursing home-hospice patients between 2005 and 2015. RESULTS: Between 2005 and 2015, the number of hospice agencies and nursing homes with common ownership grew substantially, now representing almost 1-in-5 providers in each sector. Relative to individuals using hospice in nursing homes without common ownership, adjusted analyses found that individuals receiving hospice from a commonly owned agency had a greater likelihood of having stays of 90 days or more [odds ratio (OR)=1.06; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.02-1.10], having a stay resulting in a live discharge (OR=1.06; 95% CI, 1.02-1.11), and having at least 1 registered nurse/licensed practical nurse visit during the last 3 days of life (OR=1.17; 95% CI, 1.05-1.29); these individuals also had a lower mean visit hours per day (-0.07; P=0.003). CONCLUSIONS: Common ownership between hospice agencies and nursing homes is an emerging trend that reflects a broader push toward consolidation in the health care sector. Our analyses highlight potential concerns relevant to Medicare payment policy and are a first step toward improving our understanding of these trends and their implications.

Factors Associated With Hospices' Nonparticipation in Medicare's Hospice Compare Public Reporting Program.

BACKGROUND: To enhance the quality of hospice care and to facilitate consumers' choices, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) began the Hospice Quality Reporting Program, in which CMS posted the quality measures of participating hospices on its reporting website, Hospice Compare. Little is known about the participation rate and the types of nonparticipating hospices. OBJECTIVE: To examine the factors associated with hospices' nonparticipation in Hospice Compare. RESEARCH DESIGN: We analyzed data from the CMS 2016 Hospice Compare. "Nonparticipants" were those who did not submit any quality measure. With the data of the Provider of Service file, the Healthcare Cost Report Information System, and the Area Health Resources File, multivariate logistic regressions estimated the association between nonparticipants and hospice and market characteristics, including ownership, size, nurse staffing ratio, and market competition intensity. RESULTS: Among the 4123 certified hospices subject to penalty from nonparticipation, 259 did not participate in Hospice Compare. California, New Mexico, Texas, and Wyoming had participation rates lower than 80%. Hospices that were for-profit, had no accreditation, had few nurses per patient day, provided no inpatient care, and were located in competitive markets were less likely to participate than other hospices. CONCLUSIONS: Hospice Compare successfully motivated hospice in participating in the quality report program in most of states. For-profit hospices, hospices with less quality, and hospices located in competitive markets were less likely to participate. Further research is warranted to examine the quality of these nonparticipants, especially in the 4 states with a lower participation rate.

How we use hospice: Hospice enrollment patterns and costs in elderly ovarian cancer patients.

OBJECTIVE: To describe disparities in patterns of hospice use and end-of-life costs among ovarian cancer patients. METHODS: Using Texas Cancer Registry-Medicare data, ovarian cancer patients deceased 2005-2012 with >12 months of continuous Medicare coverage before death were included. Descriptive statistics and multivariable logistic regressions were used to evaluate patterns of hospice use. Cost and resource utilization was obtained from Medicare claims and analyzed using a non-parametric Mann-Whitney test. RESULTS: 2331 patients were assessed: 1788 (77%) white, 359 (15%) Hispanic, 158 (7%) black and 26 (1%) other. 1756 (75%) enrolled in hospice prior to death but only 1580 (68%) died with hospice. 176 (10%) of 1756 patients unenrolled and died without hospice. 346 (20%) unenrolled from hospice multiple times. From 2008 to 2012, patients were less likely to unenroll from hospice prior to death. Black patients were more likely to unenroll from hospice prior to death (OR 2.07 [1.15-3.73]; p = 0.02) compared to white patients. The median amount paid by Medicare during the last six months of life was $38,530 for those in hospice compared to $49,942 if never enrolled in hospice (p < 0.0001) and was higher for black and Hispanic patients compared to white patients. 30% hospice unenrolled patients and 40% multiply enrolled hospice patients received at least one life extending or invasive care procedure following unenrollment from hospice. CONCLUSION: Recently, more patients remain enrolled in hospice, but black patients have a higher risk of unenrollment. Hospice enrollment was associated with lower costs as long as a patient did not unenroll from hospice.

Lots of little ones: Analysis of charitable donations to a hospice and palliative care unit in Taiwan.

BACKGROUND: Charitable donations play a major role in the provision of hospice and palliative care (HPC) services, most of which are not reimbursed by health insurance programs. A good understanding of the constitution and use of donations is thus conducive to maintaining a high-quality HPC unit. METHODS: The data sources were the publicly available balance sheet, work report, and donor lists of a foundation exclusively supporting one of the best HPC units in Taiwan in the fiscal year of 2017. The analysis included the donation amounts and frequencies by donor type (individual, corporate, and group) and the categories of expenses. RESULTS: The foundation received 3033 donations worth a total of 7.8 million New Taiwan dollars (NTD) (approximately 258 thousand US dollars) in 2017. Two-thirds of the donations were allocated to the provision of direct care services. Of the 3033 donations, only 11 (0.4%) were worth 100 000 NTD or more, while 108 (3.6%) were valued between 10 000 and 99 999 NTD, 1268 (41.8%) were valued between 1000 and 9999 NTD, and 1646 (54.2%) were worth less than 1000 NTD. Of 1051 donors, 974 (92.7%) were individuals, 378 (36.0%) donated more than once, and 106 (10.1%) donated 12 or more times in one year. CONCLUSION: HPC services in Taiwan are sponsored by lots of individuals and small donations. For sustainability of standards-based and quality HPC services, the benevolence of the public should be thus cherished and adequately responded to.

Medicare Program; FY 2018 Hospice Wage Index and Payment Rate Update and Hospice Quality Reporting Requirements. Final rule.

This final rule will update the hospice wage index, payment rates, and cap amount for fiscal year (FY) 2018. Additionally, this rule includes new quality measures and provides an update on the hospice quality reporting program.

Regulating and Paying for Hospice and Palliative Care: Reflections on the Medicare Hospice Benefit.

Hospice began as a social movement outside of mainstream medicine with the goal of helping those dying alone and in unbearable pain in health care institutions. The National Hospice Study, undertaken to test whether hospice improved dying cancer patients' quality of life while saving Medicare money, found hospice care achieved comparable outcomes to traditional cancer care and was less costly as long as hospice lengths of stay were not too long. In 1982, before study results were final, Congress created a Medicare hospice benefit under a capitated per diem payment system restricting further treatment. In 1986 the benefit was extended to beneficiaries living in nursing homes. This change resulted in longer average lengths of stay, explosive growth in the number of hospices, particularly of the for-profit variety, and increases in total Medicare expenditures on hospice care. An increasingly high proportion of beneficiaries receive hospice care. However, over 30 percent are served fewer than seven days before they die, while very long stays are also increasingly common. These and other factors raise quality concerns about hospice being disconnected from the rest of the health care system. We offer suggestions regarding how hospice could be better integrated into the broader health care delivery system.

Medicare Program; FY 2017 Hospice Wage Index and Payment Rate Update and Hospice Quality Reporting Requirements. Final rule.

This final rule will update the hospice wage index, payment rates, and cap amount for fiscal year (FY) 2017. In addition, this rule changes the hospice quality reporting program, including adopting new quality measures. Finally, this final rule includes information regarding the Medicare Care Choices Model (MCCM).

Hospice use among nursing home and non-nursing home patients.

BACKGROUND: For nursing home patients, hospice use and associated costs have grown dramatically. A better understanding of hospice in all care settings, especially how patients move across settings, is needed to inform debates about appropriateness of use and potential policy reform. OBJECTIVE: Our aim was to describe characteristics and utilization of hospice among nursing home and non-nursing home patients. DESIGN AND PARTICIPANTS: Medicare, Medicaid and Minimum Data Set data, 1999-2008, were merged for 3,771 hospice patients aged 65 years and above from a safety net health system. Patients were classified into four groups who received hospice: 1) only in nursing homes; 2) outside of nursing homes; 3) crossover patients utilizing hospice in both settings; and 4) "near-transition" patients who received hospice within 30 days of a nursing home stay. MAIN MEASURES: Differences in demographics, hospice diagnoses and length of stay, utilization and costs are presented with descriptive statistics. KEY RESULTS: Nursing home hospice patients were older, and more likely to be women and to have dementia (p < 0.0001). Nearly one-third (32.3 %) of crossover patients had hospice stays > 6 months, compared with the other groups (16 % of nursing home hospice only, 10.7 % of non-nursing home hospice and 7.6 % of those with near transitions) (p < 0.0001). Overall, 27.7 % of patients had a hospice stay <1 week, but there were marked differences between groups-48 % of near-transition patients vs. 7.4 % of crossover patients had these short hospice stays (p < 0.0001). Crossover and near-transition hospice patients had higher costs to Medicare compared to other groups (p < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Dichotomizing hospice users only into nursing home vs. non-nursing home patients is difficult, due to transitions across settings. Hospice patients with transitions accrue higher costs. The impact of changes to the hospice benefit on patients who live or move through nursing homes near the end of life should be carefully considered.

Unique characteristics of informal hospice cancer caregiving.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to describe the unique characteristics of informal hospice cancer caregiving. METHODS: Researchers conducted a secondary analysis of data drawn from a randomized clinical trial of an informal hospice caregiving intervention (N = 348). Demographic characteristics and measures of the informal caregiving experience of hospice patients and their informal caregivers were compared based on the patient's diagnosis using chi-square tests for association of categorical variables and t tests for continuous variables. RESULTS: Informal caregivers of cancer patients differed from their non-cancer counterparts in a number of respects including patient age, caregiver age, patient residence, relationship between patient and caregiver, amount and duration of care provided, likelihood to incur out-of-pocket expenses related to patient care, caregiver problem-solving style, and impact on caregiver daily schedule. There were no statistically significant differences between cancer and non-cancer caregivers in terms of gender, race, employment status, anxiety, and quality of life. CONCLUSIONS: While cancer and non-cancer caregivers are similar in many respects, a number of unique features characterize the informal hospice cancer caregiving experience. Attention to these unique features will allow hospice providers to tailor supportive care interventions to better address cancer caregivers' needs.

House Calls: The Impact of Home-Based Care for Older Adults With Alzheimer's and Dementia.

Older adults with Alzheimer's/dementia have high health care costs; they may benefit from home-based care, but few have home visits. This article describes a home-based care program for frail elders, including those with Alzheimer's/dementia. Descriptive statistics are provided for Medicare-enrolled program participants and matched controls with Alzheimer's/dementia on expenditures along six services: skilled nursing facility, inpatient acute, physician, home health, hospice, and social services. Cases with dementia were significantly more likely to have home health and hospice expenditures than controls, suggesting potential for the program to improve end-of-life care. Very few cases or controls had any social service expenditures. Social workers should advocate for the expanded role of home-based care for older adults with dementia and for increased Medicare reimbursement of social work services.

When the saints go marching on.

Having worked as a specialty doctor in palliative care for the past 6 years and now returning to general practice, I have become increasingly uncertain as to the future role of in-patient hospices. Perhaps the time has come for a realistic look at where exactly they fit in to the bigger picture of end-of-life care. Of particular concern is whether their existence inhibits the development of other services and fuels the myth that palliative care is different from simply good care.

Comparing end-of-life care for hospitalized patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer in Taiwan.

When it comes to end-of-life care, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients are often treated differently from lung cancer patients. However, few reports have compared end-of-life care between these two groups. We investigated the differences between patients with end-stage COPD and end-stage lung cancer based on end-of-life symptoms and clinical practice patterns using a retrospective study of COPD and lung cancer patients who died in an acute care hospital in Taiwan. End-stage COPD patients had more comorbidities and spent more days in the intensive care unit (ICU) than end-stage lung cancer patients. They were more likely to die in the ICU and less likely to receive hospice care. COPD patients also had more invasive procedures, were less likely to use narcotic and sedative drugs, and were less likely to have given do-not-resuscitate consent. Symptoms were similar between these two groups. Differences in treatment management suggest that COPD patients receive more care aimed at prolonging life than care aimed at relieving symptoms and providing end-of-life support. It may be more difficult to determine when COPD patients are at the end-of-life stage than it is to identify when lung cancer patients are at that stage. Our findings indicate that in Taiwan, more effort should be made to give end-stage COPD patients the same access to hospice care as end-stage lung cancer patients.

Medicare program; FY 2014 hospice wage index and payment rate update; hospice quality reporting requirements; and updates on payment reform. final rule.

This final rule updates the hospice payment rates and the wage index for fiscal year (FY) 2014, and continues the phase out of the wage index budget neutrality adjustment factor (BNAF). Including the FY 2014 15 percent BNAF reduction, the total 5 year cumulative BNAF reduction in FY 2014 will be 70 percent. The BNAF phase-out will continue with successive 15 percent reductions in FY 2015 and FY 2016. This final rule also clarifies how hospices are to report diagnoses on hospice claims, and provides updates to the public on hospice payment reform. Additionally, this final rule changes the requirements for the hospice quality reporting program by discontinuing currently reported measures and implementing a Hospice Item Set with seven National Quality Forum (NFQ) endorsed measures beginning July 1, 2014, as proposed. Finally, this final rule will implement the hospice Experience of Care Survey on January 1, 2015, as proposed.

Racial differences in hospice use and patterns of care after enrollment in hospice among Medicare beneficiaries with heart failure.

BACKGROUND: We examined racial differences in patterns of care and resource use among Medicare beneficiaries with heart failure after enrollment in hospice. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective cohort study of a 5% nationally representative sample of Medicare beneficiaries with heart failure who died between 2000 and 2008. Outcomes of interest included adjusted and unadjusted associations of race with hospice enrollment for any diagnosis, disenrollment, and resource use after enrollment. RESULTS: The study population included 219,275 Medicare beneficiaries with heart failure, of whom 31.4% of white patients and 24.3% of nonwhite patients enrolled in hospice in the last 6 months of life (P < .001). Despite increasing rates of hospice use for both white and nonwhite patients, nonwhite patients were 20% less likely to enroll in hospice (adjusted relative risk, 0.80; 95% CI, 0.79-0.82). After enrollment, nonwhite patients were more likely to have an emergency department visit (42.6% vs 33.9%; P<.001), to be hospitalized (46.8% vs 38.5%; P<.001), and to have an intensive care unit stay (16.9% vs 13.3%; P<.001). These differences persisted after adjustment for patient characteristics. Nonwhite patients were also more likely to disenroll from hospice (11.6% vs 7.2%; P<.001). Among patients who remained in hospice until death, nonwhite patients had higher rates of acute care resource use and higher overall costs. CONCLUSION: Rates of hospice use have increased over time for both white and nonwhite patients. Nonwhite patients were less likely than white patients to enroll in hospice and had higher resource use after electing hospice care, regardless of disenrollment status.

Differences between non-profit and for-profit hospices: patient selection and quality.

This research compares the behavior of non-profit organizations and private for-profit firms in the hospice industry, where there are financial incentives created by the Medicare benefit. Medicare reimburses hospices on a fixed per diem basis, regardless of patient diagnosis. Because under this system patients with lower expected costs are more profitable, hospices can selectively enroll patients with longer lengths of stay. While it is illegal for hospices to reject potential patients explicitly, they can influence their patient mix through referral networks. A fixed per diem rate also creates an incentive shirk on quality and to substitute lower skilled for higher skilled labor, which has implications for quality of care. By using within-market variation in hospice characteristics, the empirical evidence suggests that for-profit hospices differentially take advantage of these incentives. The results show that for-profit hospices engage in patient selection through significantly different referral networks than non-profits. They receive more patients from long-term care facilities and fewer patients through more traditional paths, such as physician referrals. This mechanism of patient selection is supported by the result that for-profits have fewer cancer patients and more patients with longer lengths of stay. While non-profit and for-profit hospices report similar numbers of staff visits per patient, for-profit firms make significantly less use of skilled nursing providers. We also find some weak evidence of lower levels of quality in for-profit hospices.

Factors associated with medical cost among patients with terminal cancer in hospice units.

This study identified factors associated with higher medical costs for patients with terminal cancer in hospice units in order to develop a daily payment system for hospice services within Korea's National Health Insurance (NHI) program. Through chart reviews conducted by staff nurses, medical information and costs were obtained for 274 patients with terminal cancer in 20 hospice units in October 2007. The daily medical cost per patient was calculated based on the fee-for-service scheme. The characteristics of the hospice units were examined by means of a semistructured questionnaire administered to hospice unit coordinators. Higher daily costs were associated with general hospital-based hospice units (as compared with free-standing units: p<0.01), low Palliative Performance Scale scores (PPS<50, p<0.05), and the presence of fever (p<0.01). In multivariate analysis, hospice unit type was found to be the factor most strongly associated with medical cost. A hospice payment system based on patient characteristics should be thoroughly considered.

Report from the United States: the U.S. health crisis deepens amid rising inequality--a review of data, fall 2011.

This report presents information on the state of the U.S. health system in late 2011. The authors include data on the uninsured and the underinsured and their access to health care, socioeconomic inequality in care, the rising costs of the U.S. health system, and the role of corporate money in health care, with special reference to the pharmaceutical industry and the hospice industry. They also provide updates on Medicaid and Medicare and on the new federal health care law. Some information on health care systems elsewhere in the world is also included.