Medicare Delays Trial of Letting Hospice Patients Continue Dialysis
A strange, long-standing Medicare policy forces patients with kidney disease to give up dialysis to receive hospice. Medicare was planning…
Some People Have a Right to Choose Any Hospice Agency. Some Don’t.
Hospice patients or their representatives have legally guaranteed rights to use the hospice agency of their choice. However, these rights…
Patients with Dementia Live Longer in Home Hospice than in Nursing Homes
A first-of-its-kind study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society in February shows that patients with dementia live…
Death at Home Associated with Higher Care Satisfaction
More Americans are now dying at home than in the hospital for the first time in half a century. While…
Can Hospice Patients Receive Chemotherapy or Radiation?
Yes, the Medicare hospice benefit allows for chemotherapy and radiotherapy as long as the purpose is symptom relief. Medicare’s hospice…
When Doctors Recommend Hospice but Family Is Not Ready
When a person has a disease in an advanced state, the life expectancy is less than six months, and all…
Does Medical School Make Doctors Less Likely to Understand Hospice Patients?
The American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Medicine recently published a study suggesting that the longer a student is in…
Does Hospice Provide 24-Hour Care?
In hospice, the question of 24-hour care is a complex one. The answer is “yes,” hospice provides continuous care in…
Are Hope and Reality at Odds in End-of-Life Care?
This question refers to a long-standing conflict in medical care. On one hand, doctors want to give their patients accurate…
Does Medicare Pay for Hospice? Does Medicaid, Medicare Advantage, or Insurance?
Yes, for qualified patients, Medicare pays 100% of charges from Medicare-certified hospice agencies and pays most of the other hospice-related…
