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Hospice use in the United States is growing, but little is known about barriers that terminally ill patients may face when trying to access hospice care. This article reports the results of the first national survey of the enrollment policies of 591 US hospices. The survey revealed that 78 percent of hospices had at least one enrollment policy that may restrict access to care for patients with potentially high-cost medical care needs, such as chemotherapy or total parenteral nutrition. Smaller hospices, for-profit hospices, and hospices in certain regions of the country consistently reported more limited enrollment policies. We observe that hospice providers' own enrollment decisions may be an important contributor to previously observed underuse of hospice by patients and families. Policy changes that should be considered include increasing the Medicare hospice per diem rate for patients with complex needs, which could enable more hospices to expand enrollment. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Three models that received Health Care Innovation Awards from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) aimed to reduce the cost and use of health care services and improve the quality of care for Medicare beneficiaries with cancer. Each emphasized a different principle: the oncology medical home, patient navigation, or palliative care. Comparing participants in each model who died during the study period to matched comparators, we found that the oncology medical home and patient navigation models were associated with decreased costs in the last ninety days of life ( $3,346 and $ 5,824 per person, respectively) and fewer hospitalizations in the last thirty days of life (fifty-seven and forty per 1,000 people, respectively). The patient navigation model was also associated with fewer emergency department visits in the last thirty days of life and increased hospice enrollment in the last two weeks of life. These promising results can inform new initiatives for cancer patients, such as the CMS Oncology Care Model.

BACKGROUND:Hospice use has increased substantially during the past decade by an increasingly diverse patient population; however, little is known about patterns of hospice use and how these patterns have changed during the past decade. OBJECTIVE:To characterize Medicare hospice users in 2000 and 2010 and estimate the prevalence of (1) very short (≤1 wk) hospice enrollment; (2) very long (>6 mo) hospice enrollment; and (3) hospice disenrollment and how these utilization patterns have varied over time and by patient and hospice characteristics. RESEARCH DESIGN:Cross-sectional analysis of Medicare hospice claims data from 2000 and 2010. SUBJECTS:All US Medicare Hospice Benefit enrollees in 2000 (N=529,573) and 2010 (N=1,150,194). RESULTS:As of 2010, more than half (53.4%) of all Medicare decedents who used hospice had either very short (≤1 wk, 32.4%) or very long (>6 mo, 13.9%) hospice enrollment or disenrolled from hospice before death (10.6%). This represents an increase of 4.9 percentage points from 2000. In multivariable analysis, patients with noncancer diagnoses, the fastest growing group of hospice users, were approximately twice as likely as those with cancer to have very short or long enrollment periods and to disenroll from hospice. CONCLUSION:The substantial proportion of hospice users with very short or long enrollment, or enrollments that end before death, underscores the potential for interventions to improve the timing and appropriateness of hospice referral so that the full benefits of hospice are received by patients and families.

Patients in Oregon are less likely to receive intensive care and more likely to receive hospice care at end of life than patients in other states. The authors argue this reflects the Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment Program and efforts to honor patients’ preferences. Under the incentives of fee-for-service Medicare, the utilization trends among persons with chronic progressive medical illness include more care in the intensive care unit (ICU), more hospitalizations, and often late or no referrals to hospice care (Figure 1). 1 These utilization patterns are strikingly different in Oregon, the second state to legalize an advance directive and the first state to legalize assisted dying. In response to this legislation, the Oregon Health and Science University Center of Ethics embraced a policy of neutrality as a public position on assisted dying while using the vote as a wake-up call to the medical community . . .

In 2009 the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) began a major, four-year investment in improving the quality of end-of-life care. The Comprehensive End of Life Care Initiative increased the numbers of VA medical center inpatient hospice units and palliative care staff members as well as the amount of palliative care training, quality monitoring, and community outreach. We divided male veterans ages sixty-six and older into categories based on their use of the VA and Medicare and examined whether the increases in their rates of hospice use in the last year of life differed from the concurrent increase among similar nonveterans enrolled in Medicare. After adjusting for age, race and ethnicity, diagnoses, nursing home use in the last year of life, census region, and urbanicity of a person's last residence, we found a 6.9-7.9-percentage-point increase in hospice use over time for the veteran categories, compared to a 5.6-percentage-point increase for nonveterans (the relative increases were 20-42 percent and 16 percent, respectively). The VA's substantial investment in palliative care appears to have resulted in greater hospice use by older male veterans enrolled in the VA, a critical step forward in caring for veterans with serious illnesses.

Individual physicians are widely believed to play a large role in patients' decisions about end-of-life care, but little empirical evidence supports this view. We developed a novel method for measuring the relationship between physician characteristics and hospice enrollment, in a nationally representative sample of Medicare patients. We focused on patients who died with a diagnosis of poor-prognosis cancer in the period 2006-11, for whom palliative treatment and hospice would be considered the standard of care. We found that the proportion of a physician's patients who were enrolled in hospice was a strong predictor of whether or not that physician's other patients would enroll in hospice. The magnitude of this association was larger than that of other known predictors of hospice enrollment that we examined, including patients' medical comorbidity, age, race, and sex. Patients cared for by medical oncologists and those cared for in not-for-profit hospitals were significantly more likely than other patients to enroll in hospice. These findings suggest that physician characteristics are among the strongest predictors of whether a patient receives hospice care-which mounting evidence indicates can improve care quality and reduce costs. Interventions geared toward physicians, both by specialty and by previous history of patients' hospice enrollment, may help optimize appropriate hospice use.

Background: Ageing nations have growing needs for end of life care, but these have never been projected in detail. We analysed past trends in place of death (1974—2003) and projected likely trends to 2030 in England and Wales and from these need for care. Methods: Mortality trends and forecasts were obtained from official statistics. Future scenarios were modelled using recent five-year trends in age and gender specific home death proportions to estimate numbers of deaths by place to 2030, accounting for future changes in the age and gender distribution of deaths. Results: Annual numbers of deaths fell by 8% from 1974 to 2003, but are expected to rise by 17% from 2012 to 2030. People will die increasingly at older ages, with the percentage of deaths among those aged 85 and expected to rise from 32% in 2003 to 44% in 2030. Home death proportions fell from 31% to 18% overall, and at an even higher rate for people aged 65 and over, women and noncancer deaths. If recent trends continue, numbers of home deaths could reduce by 42% and fewer than 1 in 10 will die at home in 2030. Annual numbers of institutional deaths (currently 440936) will be 530409 by 2030 (20% increase). Conclusions: In England and Wales home deaths have been decreasing. The projections underline the urgent need for planning care to accommodate a large increase of ageing and deaths. Either inpatient facilities must increase substantially, or many more people will need community end of life care from 2012 onwards. Palliative Medicine 2008; 22 : 33—41

Analyses of ownership in the US hospice sector have focused on the growth of for-profit hospice care and on aggregate differences in patient populations and service use patterns between for-profit and not-for-profit agencies. Such comparisons, although useful, do not offer insights about the types of organizations within the hospice sector, including the emergence of multiagency chains. Using Medicare cost report data for the period 2000-11, we tracked the evolution of the US hospice industry. We not only describe the market's composition by profit status but also provide new information about the roles of regional and national chains. Almost half of all Medicare hospice enrollees in 2011 received hospice services from a multiagency chain. A handful of companies play a prominent role, although the presence of smaller for-profit and not-for-profit hospice chains also has grown in recent years. By focusing on the role of the diverse organizations that provide hospice care, our analyses can help inform efforts to monitor and assure quality of care, to assess payment adequacy and options for reform, and to facilitate greater transparency and accountability within the hospice marketplace.

Nearly half of Americans who die in hospitals spend time in the intensive care unit (ICU) in the last 3 days of life. Minority patients who die in the ICU are less likely to formalize advance directives and surviving family members report lower satisfaction with the provision of information and sensitivity to their cultural traditions at the end-of-life. This is a descriptive report of a convenience sample of 157 consecutive patients served by a palliative care team which was integrated into the operations of an ICU at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, New York, from August 2005 until August 2007. The team included an advance practice nurse (APN) and social worker. A separate case—control study was conducted comparing the length of hospital stay for persons who died in the ICU during the final 6 months of the project, prior to and post-palliative care consultation for 22 patients at the hospital campus where the project team was located versus 24 patients at the other campus. Pharmaco-economic data were evaluated for 22 persons who died with and 43 who died without a palliative care consultation at the intervention campus ICU to evaluate whether the project intervention was associated with an increase in the use of pain medications or alterations in the use of potentially non-beneficial life-prolonging treatments in persons dying in the ICU. Data was abstracted from the medical record with a standardized chart abstraction instrument by an unblinded research assistant. Interviews were conducted with a sample of family members and ICU nurses rating the quality of end-of-life care in the ICU with the Quality of Dying and Death in the ICU instrument (ICUQODD), and a family focus group was also conducted. Forty percent of patients were Caucasian, 35% were African American or Afro-Caribbean, 22% Hispanic and 3% were Asian or other. Exploration of the patients’ and families’ needs identified significant spiritual needs in 62.4% of cases. Education on the death process was provided to 85% of families by the project team. Twenty-nine percent of patients were disconnected from mechanical ventilators following consultation with the Palliative Care Service (PCS), 15.9% of patients discontinued the use of inotropic support, 15.3% stopped artificial nutrition, 6.4% stopped dialysis and 2.5% discontinued artificial hydration. Recommendations on pain management were made for 51% of the project’s patients and symptom management for 52% of patients. The project was associated with an increase in the rate of the formalization of advance directives. Thirty-three percent of the patients who received PCS consultations had ‘do not resuscitate’ orders in place prior to consultation and 83.4% had ‘do not resuscitate’ orders after the intervention. The project team referred 80 (51%) of the project patients to hospice and 55 (35%) patients were enrolled on hospice, primarily at the medical center. The mean time from admission to palliative care consultation at the project site was 2.8 days versus 15.5 days at the other campus (p = 0.0184). Median survival times from admission to the medical center were not significantly different when stratified by palliative care consultation status: 12 days for the control group (95% CI 8—18) and 13.5 days for the intervention group (95% CI 8—20). Median charges for the use of opioid medications were higher (p = 0.01) for the intervention group but lower for use of laboratory (p = 0.004) and radiology tests (p = 0.027). We conclude that the integration of palliative care experts into the operation of critical care units is of benefit to patients, families and critical care clinicians. Preliminary evidence suggest that such models may be associated with improved quality of life, higher rates of formalization of advance directives and utilization of hospices, as well as lower use of certain non-beneficial life-prolonging treatments for critically ill patients who are at the end of life.

Aim To examine trends in hospice service use and distribution of place of death, as well as their associated factors in the United States (US). Methods A retrospective data analysis based on the US Health and Retirement Study between 1st January 2002 to 31st December 2020. Results Our analysis included 12,784 deaths, of which 3,347 (26.18%) received hospice care in the last two years of life. Hospice utilization during this period rose sharply from 6.30% in 2002 to 51.44% in 2020; however, persistent disparities in hospice use were observed among non-cancer patients and rural populations. Concurrently, hospital deaths declined from 42.23% to 26.25%, with corresponding increases in deaths at private homes (from 28.35% to 33.44%) and in hospice facilities (from 4.16% to 10.59%). Compared with hospital deaths, hospice recipients were substantially more likely to die in hospice facilities (RRR = 1748.11, 95% CI 1070.97-2853.37, P  < 0.001), at home (RRR = 5.41, 95% CI 4.52–6.47, P  < 0.001), or in nursing homes (RRR = 4.17, 95% CI 3.46–5.04, P  < 0.001). Conclusion Hospice care utilization increased markedly between 2002 and 2020, reflecting broader acceptance of palliative care and contributing to a shift from hospital deaths to deaths at home or in hospice settings. Persistent disparities in hospice use among non-cancer patients and rural populations, together with the uncertain impact of expanded hospice availability on care quality beyond place of death, warrant further investigation.