In the Health Affairs Blog [1], former HCFO grantee Donald Taylor co-authored a post on Medicare hospice and end-of-life policy. The piece discusses the three policy changes that the new year will bring (hospice reimbursement reform, payment for advanced care planning discussions, and the Medicare Care Choices Model) and features findings from Taylor’s HCFO study. In his HCFO-funded study [2], Taylor and colleagues conducted a literature review and empirical analyses to determine the effects of hospice on Medicare expenditures and out-of-pocket expenses incurred by families of terminally ill Medicare beneficiaries. They found [3] that given the length of hospice use observed in the Medicare program, increasing the length of a hospice stay for some beneficiaries would increase savings.
Links:
[1] http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2015/12/22/evaluating-a-new-era-in-medicare-hospice-and-end-of-life-policy/
[2] http://www.hcfo.org/grants/does-hospice-save-medicare-money
[3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17600605
[4] http://www.hcfo.org/topics/costs-and-cost-containment
[5] http://www.hcfo.org/topics/end-life-care
[6] http://www.hcfo.org/topics/medicare