Live discharges from hospice advise money-saving measures

About 1 in 5 Medicare patients is liberated from hospice caring alive, either due to patients’ sensitive choice, a change in their condition, or inapt actions by a hospice to save on hospitalization costs associated to depot illness. How live liberate rates differ between hospice programs and geographic regions, and when those rates should lift red flags are among a issues explored in a essay “A National Study of Live Discharges from Hospice,” published in Journal of Palliative Medicine, a peer-reviewed biography from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The essay is accessible giveaway on a Journal of Palliative Medicine website until Sep 13, 2014.

Joan M. Teno, MD, Pedro Gozalo, PhD, and Vincent Mor, PhD, Brown University School of Public Health (Providence, RI), and Michael Plotzke, PhD, Abt Associates (Cambridge, MA), examined all of a Medicare hospice discharges in a U.S. between Jan 1 to Dec 31, 2010. For a patients liberated alive, they collected information on presence for adult to 6 months, successive hospitalizations, and Medicare payments during a 30 days after live hospice discharge. The authors yield sum on a estimable movement they found in a rates of live discharges opposite states and between sold hospices, in sold comparing