July 29, 2019 – Hospice Concerns

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Anchor lead: A government report finds flaw with some hospices, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Two federal agencies, Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, assess hospice services nationally, with recent reports finding some issues. Yet Tom Smith, director of palliative care at Johns Hopkins, says this information is not available to consumers.

Smith: Much of the critique of hospice has been not so much profit versus not for profit but very small hospices tend to be not as good as larger hospices, whether they’re for profit or not. One of the biggest for profit hospices is Seasons, and yet they do more music therapy than anybody else. We really need to publish that data hospice by hospice and give people the opportunities to choose and hospices the opportunity to correct things. :31

Smith says Medicare does have a consumer website called Hospice Compare where such data could be posted. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.