Home Health & Hospice Week
Another Prominent Newspaper Addresses Hospice Care
After a scathing exposé on for-profit hospices recruiting long-stay patients, the New York Times is beating up the industry for discharging patients who are no longer eligible for the Medicare benefit.
Hospice discharges are climbing, notes the Times in its "New Old Age" blog. Hospices blame a crackdown on eligibility from Medicare. But one discharged patient’s daughter calls the discharge "cruel" in the newspaper.
Gilchrist Hospice, the largest in Maryland, discharges about 20 percent of its patients, and "we’re on the low side," its clinical director Regina Bodnar told the Times.
"CMS, through its contractors, is looking much more carefully at longer-stay patients," the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organiza-tion’s Jonathon Keyserling told the Times. With hospices under increasing scrutiny, "they need to be even more careful about the patients they admit and the patients they keep."
In the past, "you never did weights on hospice patients," Bodnar said. Now, Gilchrist weighs patients; if it can’t, it measures the circumferences of their arms. "We’re looking for objective data" to justify recertifying patients, she said.
"I worry about families who have agonized about the decision and finally called for help, then feel betrayed when hospice withdraws," Times blogger Paula Span writes.
"I get the need to right the ship and make sure only eligible patients receive benefits," Bodnar said. "My fear is that we’re at risk of discharging patients who aren’t dying fast enough."
Home Health & Hospice Week
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Another Prominent Newspaper Addresses Hospice Care
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