Medicare Hospice – exploding in size but riddled with quality concerns

Medicare Hospice – exploding in size but riddled with quality concerns 
Penn LDI, by Hoag Levins; 3/8/24 
Five top experts on hospice care convened in a virtual discussion of the Medicare Hospice program. This video is the full session.

• Ira Byock, MD
• Mary Ersek, PhD, RN
• Kimberly Sherrel Johnson, MD
• David Stevenson, PhD
• Rachel M. Werner, MD, PhD, Moderator
  

Since its launch 41 years ago, the Medicare Hospice program that covers the costs of care for terminally ill patients has exploded in size. One-fourth of Medicare spending now goes to hospice care as half of all the people who die are Medicare beneficiaries using the program. In 2000, there were 500,000 hospice users. There are now 1.8 million. The annual Medicare spending in that same period has gone from $3 million to $23 billion.
Publisher's notes: 1) I listened to this 1-hour video this weekend. It's definitely worth taking time to listen to these five experts and this discussion. 2) The author notes “one-fourth of Medicare spending now goes to hospice care”. I suspect he meant to say “Medicare beneficiaries in their last year of life accounts for about 25% of total Medicare spending” per this 2016 KFF article. Medicare 2022 hospice spend= $23B, about 2.4% of Medicare's total spend of $944B per this CMS article.