Government Spending More Than $12 Billion on Hospice Care

[cbayer]

ABC News
By KIM CAROLLO (@kimcarollo)
Aug. 9, 2011

The amount of money Medicare spent on hospice care increased more than 53 percent between 2005 and 2009 to $12 billion, according to a government report.

Hospice care is provided at the end of a person's life and focuses on providing comfort, not a cure. Medicare covers certain hospice care costs provided a person has a terminal illness, six months or less to live and receives care in an approved facility.

The rise in spending is largely due to a big increase in the number of people who use hospice services. In 2009, more than 1 million people received hospice care, a 25 percent increase over 2005. People can receive this type of care at home, in a long-term care facility, in hospitals or in facilities that specialize in hospice care.

In addition to a boom in the number of people who receive it, the number of facilities that provide end-of-life care services also increased.


more at link:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/spending-hospice-care-jumps-50-percent-years/story?id=14255103

[GodlessBiker]

1. And that's just for Mitch McConnell.

[WorseBeforeBetter]

2. $12 billion over a 4-year period. How many months of war does that buy? (n/t)

[Chimichurri]

17. well, lets see -- 9 billion dollars per month on Iraq alone...

that's a lot of hospice.


http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aairaqwarcost.htm

[sinkingfeeling]

3. Yes, they've found another 'racket': For-profit hospice services!

[DURHAM D]

11. Yes they have.

Hospice billed Medicare $12,000 for services they did not provide for my Mother. We were stunned and helped the government get the money back. The report does not arrive until months after the patient has died and months after Hospice as supposedly "provided" the services. Most people probably don't pay any attention to these Medicare reports.

I encourage everyone to pay close attention to Hospice billing. They count on family members ignoring the details. In our situation my Mother was in a special memory unit in a retirement community. My father (and family) contracted for all of her needs and paid all of her bills out of pocket. Hospice sent a bill and got paid by the retirement community and they both pretended Hospice was providing care.

[RebelOne]

4. My mother received hospice care.

But she was staying with my sister who was paid for my mother's care. I don't know who paid her, probably the hospice. I have nothing bad to say about hospice care because they provided everything needed for my mother's comfort in her last months. After my mother passed, my sister called the hospice givers and they came and took my mother to the funeral home.

[eShirl]

5. hospice probably saved them a lot more than that

[Lars39]

6. The big increase in users of hospice is because they don't receive

timely treatment due to no insurance or insurance with huge deductibles, imo. Are we supposed to now begrudge a dying person care because of the cost?

[Bandit]

7. IMO we could ten fold that spending there and not come close to what it deserves.

Please America add to this spending and don't cut it....Nothing shows our humanity more than Hospice IMO...

[lunatica]

8. My mother had home hospice care.

As far as I'm concerned there should be a fast lane into Heaven for Hospice Care workers. No need to stop or pay a toll. Just go in.

[rox63]

12. My mother worked hospice cases for the local visiting nurses agency

It is tough, emotionally draining work. But the comfort it gives to the dying person and their family is priceless.

[lunatica]

14. Tell your mother what I said about the fast lane and no paying tolls

I am profoundly grateful to have had my mother and our family so well taken care of. I can't put it into words that would do justice to how wonderful people who are drawn to do hospice work are. They're like living angels blessing your whole family.

And after she died they called every few months to see how we were doing.

The hospice workers made my mother's last few months some of the most graceful in her life. Being at home with no more stress and only good and gentle care made her last months quiet and gentle. She went into her death coma and in just a very few hours she died very gently and quietly. I'm grateful beyond words that the hospice workers did that for her and for us.

Now I'm crying. :cry:

[rox63]

16. Thanks - I will let her know

:hug:

[sinkingfeeling]

13. Folks, there are volunteer hospice workers and then, in the last couple of decades, there are

for-profit hospice corporations! Please know there are great differences between them.


http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-for-profit-hospice-industry.html
Rise of for-profit hospice industry raises troubling questions, new study says


A new survey of hospice care in the United States says that the rapidly growing role of for-profit companies in providing end-of-life care for terminally ill patients raises serious concerns about whose interests are being served under such a commercial arrangement: those of shareholders or those of dying patients and their loved ones.

"Under a corporate model of hospice care, there's an inherent conflict of interest between a company's drive to maximize profits and a patient's need for the kind of holistic, multidisciplinary and compassionate care originally envisioned by the founders of the modern hospice movement," said Dr. Robert Stone, an emergency medicine physician in Bloomington, Ind.

[lunatica]

15. Fortunately Kaiser has a Palliative department

Doctors call them in when they get patients who might die. Once it's determined the illness is terminal they consult with the family and just like Doctors they order the hospice care.

Every penny of it was covered by medicare.

[annabanana]

9. A worthwhile expenditure. Take it from the military budget. . .n/t

[lonestarlib]

10. My father received hospice care so that he could die at home

surrounded by family. Hospice provided a hospital bed, nurses who visited 2-3 times a week, and a bather 3 days a week. They also handled the death certificate & removal of his body. The quality varies widely, and we were extremely fortunate to find a caring service. Something else they provided which is priceless: freedom from the guilt which my sister, I, and especially my mother would have felt had my father died at home in pain or in a nasty nursing home. We could not have afforded one of the hoity-toity ones.

[NC_Nurse]

18. My mother received care from a "for-profit" hospice. They were wonderful and helped

us keep her at home until her death. If we had put her in a nursing home, it would have cost a LOT more.

[Name removed]

19. Deleted message

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