National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization

What’s Behind the Criticism of Hospice? Is It Fair?

Hospice is facing unprecedented public criticism. In recent months, The Washington Post has published at least four highly critical articles, alleging widespread instances of poor care and fraud. In June, The Huffington Post published a long investigative piece largely targeting the practices of the for-profit hospice operator Vitas Healthcare Corp. What’s this about? How did a movement aimed at comforting the [...]

By Howard Gleckman|2014-09-11T17:37:44-04:00September 11th, 2014|End of life|8 Comments

Learning the Right Lessons from Hospice

Health policymakers love the idea of hospice. Yet Medicare seems to be learning exactly the wrong lessons from the success of the program, which provides well-integrated patient-centered comfort care to people with terminal illness. Instead of trying to understand why hospice is growing in popularity, Medicare is instead making it harder to enroll. As often happens in its regulation of [...]

By Howard Gleckman|2013-01-18T17:16:59-05:00January 18th, 2013|Aging, End of life, Medicare|4 Comments