Home Health & Hospice Week
Newspaper Exposé Slams For-Profit Hospices For Long-Stay, Ineligible Patients
Expect hospice payment reform to get on an even faster track, thanks to a high-profile exposé on for-profit hospices in the Washington Post.
The Post recites multiple allegations from whistleblower lawsuits against for-profit companies including AseraCare and Vitas. (For more details on the suits, see Eli’s HCW, Vol. XXI, No. 2 [Asera-Care] and Vol. XXII, No. 17 [Vitas]). It lambastes the for-profit hospice industry for recruiting patients who don’t truly have a six-month prognosis and discharging too many live patients.
For example: AseraCare’s Mobile, Ala. lo-cation discharged about 78 percent of patients alive, the newspaper reports. Delta Hospice in California had a branch with a 63 percent live discharge rate.
For-profits aim for long-stay patients be-cause they are the most profitable, the Post says. Due to pressure from management, marketers and clinicians admit patients who aren’t really eligible for the benefit, bilking Medicare of major funding.
The Dec. 26 article, "Hospice Firms Drain-ing Billions from Medicare," was picked up for wide distribution in a number of other newspapers and had generated more than 860 comments on the Post website as of press time.
Home Health & Hospice Week
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Newspaper Exposé Slams For-Profit Hospices For Long-Stay, Ineligible Patients
Expect hospice payment reform to get on an even faster track, thanks to a high-profile [...] - Industry Note:
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