Abstract
Abstract
Background:
Live hospice discharges represent a potential vulnerability in the Medicare hospice benefit. Little is known about how live discharges have varied over time.
Objective:
To identify trends in live hospice discharges between 2000 and 2012.
Design, Setting, Patients:
Retrospective cohort study of Medicare hospice discharges.
Measurements:
In this study, we examined live discharges in the first six months of 2000, 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2012. A live discharge was classified as a burdensome transition if hospice discharge was followed by hospital admission, and then there was a hospice readmission within 2 days of hospital discharge. The adjusted rate of overall live discharges and burdensome transitions was examined with a multivariate mixed-effects logistic model that adjusted for age, gender, race, and hospice primary diagnosis. The model contained an interaction term for year and hospice tax status.
Results:
The unadjusted overall rate of live discharges increased from 13.7% in 2000 to 18.1% in 2012. For-profit hospice programs had an adjusted live discharge rate of 17.7% in 2000 and 22.7% in 2012. During the same period, the adjusted live discharge rate for nonprofit hospice programs increased from 15.2% to 16.3%. The overall rate of burdensome transitions increased from 2.9% in 2000 to 5.3% in 2012. Similar to the overall rate of live discharge, for-profit hospices had a higher rate of burdensome transitions (6.4%) than nonprofit hospices (4.0%) in 2012.
Conclusions:
Live hospice discharges and burdensome transitions increased between 2000 and 2012. For-profit hospice programs demonstrated larger increases than nonprofit hospice programs.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.