Hospice news

A new study indicates that integrating hospice care into nursing homes reduces hospitalizations among nursing home residents who are dying. Researchers from Brown University compared hospitalizations of over 9,000 Medicare hospice residents with 27,500 nonhospice residents with similar lengths of nursing home stays. Overall, 24 percent of hospice and 44 percent of nonhospice residents were hospitalized in the last month of life. Nonhospice residents also benefited from being in nursing homes with hospice care, likely due to the hospice philosophy and practice in those facilities. Compared with residents in facilities with no hospice, hospitalization was 18 percent less likely for nonhospice residents in facilities with low hospice use and 29 percent less likely for those facilities with moderate hospice use (defined by 5 percent or more residents in hospice). (From the American Journal of Medicine, July 2001.)