Hospice care is a type of medical care service for patients who are terminally ill. Hospice offer support services for the families of terminally ill patients. This care includes physical care and counseling. Hospice care is usually provided by a public agency or private company approved by Medicare and Medicaid. Hospice care can be acquired for many age groups, including children, adults, and seniors who are in the last stages of life. The goal of hospice is to offer look after the terminally ill patient and his / her family and not to cure the terminal illness.
If someone qualifies for hospice care, the individual can receive medical and support services, including nursing care, medical social services, doctor services, counseling, homemaker services, and other types of services. The hospice patient could have a group of doctors, nurses, home health aides, social workers, counselors and trained volunteers to simply help the individual and his / her members of the family cope with the observable symptoms and consequences of the terminal illness. While many hospice patients and their own families can receive hospice care in the comfort of their home, if the hospice patient’s condition deteriorates, the individual could be utilized in a hospice facility, hospital, or nursing home to get hospice care.
How many days that the patient receives hospice care is usually referenced whilst the “period of stay” or “period of service.” The size of service is influenced by a number of different factors, including however not limited to, the kind and stage of the disease, the grade of and use of medical care providers prior to the hospice referral, and the timing of the hospice referral. In 2008, the median period of stay for hospice patients was about 21 days, the typical period of stay was about 69 days, almost 35% of hospice patients died or were discharged within 7 days of the hospice referral, and no more than 12% of hospice patients survived more than 180 days.
Most hospice care patients receive hospice care in private homes (40%). Other locations where hospice services are provided are nursing homes (22%), residential facilities (6%), hospice inpatient facilities (21%), and acute care hospitals (10%). Hospice patients are generally seniors, and hospice generation percentages are 34 years or less (1%), 35 – 64 years (16%), 65 – 74 years (16%), 75 – 84 years (29%), and over 85 years (38%). When it comes to terminal illness resulting in a hospice referral, cancer is the diagnosis for almost 40% of hospice patients, accompanied by debility unspecified (15%), cardiovascular disease (12%), dementia (11%), lung disease (8%), stroke (4%) and kidney disease (3%). Medicare pays the fantastic majority of hospice care expenses (84%), accompanied by private insurance (8%), Medicaid (5%), charity care (1%) and self pay (1%).
By 2008, there were approximately 4,700 locations which were providing hospice care in the United States, which represented about a 50% increase over ten years. There have been about 3,700 companies and organizations which were providing hospice services in the United States. About half of the hospice care providers in the United States are for-profit organizations, and about 50 % are non-profit organizations.
General Breakdown of the Medicare and Medicaid Programs