Hospices are Incurring Medicare Debt Because Their Patients are Living Longer

Hospices across the United States are facing hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicare debt because their patients are living longer than expected.

According to Kevin Sack, In Hospice Care, Longer Lives Mean Money Lost, NYTimes.com, Nov. 27, 2007:

In the early days of the Medicare hospice benefit, which was designed for those with less than six months to live, nearly all patients were cancer victims, who tended to die relatively quickly and predictably once curative efforts were abandoned.

But in the last five years, hospice use has skyrocketed among patients with less predictable trajectories, like those with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.***

Medicare’s coverage of hospice, which began in 1983, has become one of the fastest growing components of the government’s fastest growing entitlement. Spending nearly tripled from 2000 to 2005, to $8.2 billion, and nearly 40 percent of Medicare recipients now use the service.***

A number of hospice providers said ethical and legal constraints would prevent them from discharging patients who outlived their profit potential. But some said they sometimes delayed admission for those patients with illnesses that might result in longer stays.***