But numerous studies have documented that as a group, nonprofits provide better care. As of 2019, all hospices within a geographic area receive the same daily payment per Medicare beneficiary, but patients enrolled in nonprofits receive more visits from nurses, social workers, and physicians. Study by consulting firm Milliman,
Patients on benefit are more likely to be discharged before dying, a particularly distressing experience for families. “This violates hospice’s underlying contract to care for patients until the end of life,” Dr. Atkins said.
Dr. Joan Tenno, a health policy researcher at Brown University, and her team reported on these in 2015. “clumsy change” In which the patients were discharged, admitted to the hospital and then re-admitted to the hospital.
This happened to 12 percent of patients enrolled in for-profits affiliated with national chains, and 18 percent of patients enrolled in for-profits that were not chain-affiliated—but only 1.4 percent of patients in nonprofit hospices. For.
dr teno latest studyConducted with the RAND Corporation, analyzes the Family Caregiver Survey that Medicare introduced in 2016. Using data from 653,208 respondents from 2017 to 2019, the researchers ranked nearly 31 percent of for-profit hospices as “low performers,” far below the national average. , compared to 12.5 percent of nonprofits.
More than a third of nonprofits, but only 22 percent of for-profits, were “high performers.” In 2019, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General also reported Most of the underperforming hospices were identified for profit.
In addition to such differences, the hospice industry is plagued by fraud in many states. check by Los Angeles Times In 2020 and the state auditor found that scores of new hospices were being certified and billing Medicare for Profit in California.
