WilsonB. P.BlosséR. W.TuckerJ. L.SpectorK. K., “Hospice Care: Perspectives on a Blue Cross Plan's Community Pilot Program,”Inquiry20, no. 4 (1983): 322–327.
3.
SmithD. H.GranboisJ. A., “The American Way of Hospice,”Hastings Center Report12, no. 2 (April 1982): 8–10 (“Typically, [hospices] are small, with 75 percent admitting fewer than 100 patient/family units in 1980, and only 2 percent admitting more than 250. The average current caseload was sixteen patient/family units. Sixty percent of the programs reported annual budgets under $75,000; only 10 percent had budgets over $300,000. The hospice patient can be autonomous in an important sense of that word; dignity and thinking for himself do matter. But the overwhelming fact of his life, and of the lives of those who provide him with care, is his dependence on or relatedness to others. Debilitating illness makes it impossible not to come to terms with this fact.
4.
See Wilson, supra note 2.
5.
ConnerS. R., “Development of Hospice and Palliative Care in the United States,”Omega – Journal of Death and Dying56, no. 1 (2007): 89–99, at 89–90.
6.
Editorial, “The Debate in Hospice Care,”Journal of Oncology Practice4 (2008): 153–157, at 153;
7.
AldridgeM. D., “Hospices' Enrollment Policies May Contribute to Underuse of Hospice Care in the United States,”Health Affairs31, no. 12 (2012): 2690–2698, at 2693. In 2013, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued a final rule disfavoring “debility” and “adult failure to thrive” as hospice eligibility diagnoses. Department of Health and Human Services Medicare Program, “FY 2014 Hospice Wage Index and Payment Rate Update; Hospice Quality Reporting Requirements; and Updates on Payment Reform; Final Rule,” Federal Register 78 (to be codified at 42 CFR pt. 418): 48234.
JenningsR., “A Federal Role in Hospice Care?”American Psychologist37, no. 11 (1982): 1249, 1251 (“The hospice concept begins when the patients themselves are encouraged to give families and doctors the cue that they have had enough: Of chemotherapy that makes them even sicker, of medical procedures that cause them even more pain, of tests that are mostly experimental in nature and not really expected to help.”).
10.
LorenzK., “Cash and Compassion: Profit Status and the Delivery of Hospice Services,”Journal of Palliative Medicine5, no. 4 (2002): 507–514, at 508.
11.
NoeK.SmithP. C., “Quality Measures for the U.S. Hospice System,”Ageing International37, no. 2 (2012): 165–180, at 168.
12.
ThompsonJ. W.CarlsonM. D. A.BradleyE. H., “US Hospice Industry Experienced Considerable Turbulence from Changes in Ownership, Growth, and Shift To For-Profit Status,”Health Affairs31, no. 6 (2012): 1286–1293, at 1286.
13.
PerryJ.StoneR. C., “In the Business of Dying: Questioning the Commercialization of Hospice,”Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics39, no. 2 (2011): 224–234, at 227.
14.
See Lorenz, supra note 9, at 511.
15.
AbramsonM., “The Continuing Evolution of Medicare Hospice Policy,”Public Administration Review67, no. 1 (2007): 127–134, at 130.
16.
See NHPCO, supra note 7, at 5.
17.
CherlinE.“Interdisciplinary Staffing Patterns: Do For-Profit and Nonprofit Hospices Differ?”Journal of Palliative Medicine13, no. 4 (2010): 389–394, at 393.
18.
McCueM.ThompsonJ., “Operational and Financial Performance of Publicly Traded Hospice Companies,”Journal of Palliative Medicine8, no. 6 (2005): 1196–1206, at 1205.
19.
LindroothR. C.WeisbrodB. A., “Do Religious Non-Profit and For-Profit Organizations Respond Differently to Financial Incentives? The Hospice Industry,”Journal of Health Economics26, no. 2 (2007): 342–357, at 354.
20.
See NoeSmith, supra note 10, at 168.
21.
CasarettD., “Making Difficult Decisions about Hospice Enrollment: What Do Patients and Families Want to Know?”Journal of the American Geriatric Society53, no. 2 (2005): 249–254, at 250.
22.
WaldropD. P.MeekerM. A., “Hospice Decision-Making: Diagnosis Makes a Difference,”Gerontologist52, no. 5 (2012): 686–97, at 686.
23.
42 CFR §418.52(c)(4); Federal Register73, no. 109 (2008): 32146.
“The company I created is worth a lot of money, and so on paper I created a lot of wealth. That was sort of not the intended result of what I set out to do. It is something that sort of happened along the way.”).
BuckJ., “Nursing the Borderlands of Life: Hospice and the Politics of Health Care Reform,” in D'AntonioPatriciaLewensonSandra, eds., Nursing Interventions Through Time: History as Evidence (New York: Springer, 2010): At 212.
38.
BuckJ., “Policy and the Re-Formation of Hospice: Lessons from the Past for the Future of Palliative Care,”Journal of Hospice & Palliative Nursing13, no. 6 (2011): S35–S43.
39.
42 C.F.R. § 418.22(b) (2013).
40.
Id.
41.
See infra note 101 and accompanying text.
42.
42 C.F.R. §418.204(a).
43.
Records obtained from the Florida Secretary of State designate January 12, 1984 as the date that Hospice Care Incorporated – the entity now part of Chemed – was formed. Records obtained from the Delaware Secretary of State show that Vitas Healthcare Corporation was formed on August 24, 1983. Hospice Inc. was formed in June 1978.
44.
RichS., “Two Hospice Pioneers Starting a Business,” Washington Post, February 22, 1984;
45.
Vitas Healthcare Corporation, Form S-1 Registration Statement under the Securities Act of 1933, at 32 [hereinafter “S-1”].
46.
See DeFede, supra note 29.
47.
Id.
48.
Id.
49.
Associated Press, “Top Lawmakers Heed Givers' Likes and Dislikes,” Chicago Tribune, September 10, 1998 (citing Charles Lewis, The Buying of Congress, Center for Public Integrity 1998) (“Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) co-sponsored legislation to provide federally funded hospice care for terminally ill veterans, a bill cheered by Vitas Healthcare Corp. of Miami, which hoped to tap that new source of funds in addition to its Medicare money. The company contributed $23,000 to Daschle as his third-most-generous contributor.”).
50.
Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability, Florida's Certificate of Need Process Ensures Qualified Hospice Programs; Performance Reporting is Important to Assess Hospice Quality, March 2006, available at <http://www.oppaga.state.fl.us/MonitorDocs/Reports/pdf/0629rpt.pdf>(last visited November 4, 2014);
WestbrookH., “Saving the Medicare Hospice Benefit from Certain Failure,” Testimony and Recommendations to the Health Subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, September 17, 1984 (“We convinced a group of investors to capitalize our company based on certain assumptions of financial viability…The proportion of the reimbursement dollar devoted to indirect costs, as opposed to direct patient care, could be minimized by…spreading those indirect costs over an atypically large patient population…”).
56.
Id.
57.
Latz GriffinJ.SteinS., “Hospice Firm Uses Nurses to Recruit Patients,”Chicago Tribune, August 26, 1990;
58.
SteinS.GriffinJ. L., “Hospice's Patient Recruiting under Fire,”Chicago Tribune, September 9, 1990.
59.
See DeFede, supra note 29.
60.
Investor Agreement dated December 17, 1991 between Hospice Care Incorporated, Chemed Corporation, and OCR Holding Company.
Investor Agreement dated December 17, 1991 between Hospice Care Incorporated, Chemed Corporation, and OCR Holding Company.
65.
See S-1, supra note 40, at 60.
66.
Id., at 4 (“Prior to fiscal year 1995, Vitas had attempted to diversify its operations to include non-hospice services, such as chronic disease management, through the development of large multi-functional service teams at the local program level with regional support capabilities.”).
Amended and Restated Investor Agreement dated April 27, 2001 between Vitas Healthcare Corporation, Chemed Corporation, and OCR Holding Company.
74.
See Boyer, supra note 53.
75.
Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Medicare and Medicaid Programs: Hospice Conditions of Participation;
76.
Final Rule, Federal Register73 (to be codified at 42 CFR pt. 418): 32090;
77.
IglehartJ. K., “A New Era of For-Profit Hospice Care – the Medicare Benefit,”New England Journal of Medicine360, no. 26 (2009): 2701–2703, at 2701 (“MedPAC, for its part, has recommended substantial changes designed to improve the accuracy of Medicare payments to hospices, increase hospice organizations' accountability, and ensure greater involvement by physicians in end-of-life care. A recent study showed that physicians often end all contact with patients once they refer them for hospice care.”).
U.S. v. Vitas Hospice Servs., L.L.C., No. 4:13-cv-00449-BCW (W.D. Mo. filed May 2, 2013), at 37–47.
88.
Id., at 13.
89.
Id., at 14.
90.
Id.
91.
Id.
92.
Id.
93.
Id., at 13–32;
94.
see also Complaint at 16–26, U.S. ex rel Urick v. Vitas HME Solutions, Inc., No. SA08CA0663 (W.D. Tex. filed August 8, 2008); Complaint at 9–16, U.S. ex rel Gonzales v. Vitas Healthcare Corp., No. CV12–0761 (C.D. Cal. docketed Jan. 27, 2012); Complaint at 6–9, Spottiswood ex rel. U.S. v. Chemed Corp., No. 4:13-cv-005050-BCW (N.D. Ill. filed August 14, 2007).
95.
See U.S. v. Vitas Hospice Servs., L.L.C., supra note 67, at 15.
96.
Id.
97.
Id., at 14–15 (Procedures provided to medical staff were inconsistent with Medicare regulations, and a former medical director believed he could bill Medicare for CHC if the patient was “Actively dying.”).
98.
Id., at 34.
99.
Id.
100.
Id., at 35.
101.
Id., at 34.
102.
Id.
103.
Id., at 35.
104.
Id.
105.
Id.
106.
BlumJ., “Informed Consent in the Hospice Setting: A Discussion of the Legal Doctrine and Its Impact on Hopsice Programs,”American Journal of Hospice Care3, no. 4 (1986): 19–22, at (19;
See ChurchillL. R., “The Ethics of Hospice Care?” in DavidsonG. W., ed., Hospice: Development and Administration (Hemisphere Publishing Company, 1985): At 163–179 (identifying a range of relevant medical practices and communication relationships challenged and even upended in the hospice care setting).
