Eli's Hospice Insider

If you need proof that the hospice industry is changing rapidly, look to a study published in the January issue of Health Affairs.

In 2011, nearly half of all Medicare hospice enrollees were served by a multi-agency chain, says a study by researchers from Vanderbilt University and Harvard Medical School. That’s up from about 25 percent a decade before, notes a Forbes article about the study. While there are for- and non-profit chains, the multi-agency market is dominated by the for-profits, Forbes points out.

“Hospices are scrambling to consolidate so they can benefit from the economies of scale and marketing advantages of being big,” Forbes notes. “Publicly-traded companies are responding to investor demands for increasing revenues.”

See the study abstract at http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/34/1/30.abstract and the Forbes article with more stats at www.forbes.com/sites/howardgleckman/2015/01/14/hospice-is-becoming-a-chain-business.