Background
Like most issues about which I post, the topic of “Finding A Good Death” arose from a personal connection. In this case when a neighbor consulted me about his sister who was being referred to hospice care after battling cancer. While not an expert in hospice care, I have long studied seniors housing and care and, for a time, I followed the publicly traded hospice companies as a stock analyst. I also have some personal experience with hospice care. My older brother (only four years my senior) utilized hospice care before his death in late 2014 from a degenerative neurological condition. To supplement my own knowledge for this blog post, I interviewed a friend and neighbor who is a long-time bereavement counselor volunteer at a large not-for-profit hospice in Baltimore and researched the topic on line.
John McCain’s death, which appeared to come quickly surrounded by friends and family after the Senator elected hospice care, also makes the subject of Finding A Good Death very relevant.
Even though we all die eventually, talking about death and planning for death, beyond making funeral arrangements, are taboo subjects for most Americans. We are culturally geared to want to live as long as possible and most physicians and patients have a strong bias toward utilizing the most expensive, invasive and technologically advanced medical procedures to prolong life, viewing death as failure rather than an inevitable part of the life cycle.
According to data from the Social Security Administration:
- A man age 65 today can expect to live, on average, until age 84.3.
- A woman age 65 today can expect to live, on average, until age 86.7.
About one out of every four 65-year-olds today will live past age 90, one out of 10 will live past age 95; and longevity estimates for 65 year olds continue to rise. Also, these statistics are averages for the entire population, so healthy non-smokers and those with better health plans and medical care should expect to live longer. Once you reach 65, I would argue you already have a very good chance of living a long life and you and your family should be more concerned with the quality rather than quantity of the remaining life you lead, and with the quality of your death, the focus of this post.
A good death is generally understood to be one that comes quickly and peacefully and with minimal pain and suffering, ideally at home and with an opportunity for loved ones to say their goodbyes.
Understanding Hospice
English physician Dame Cicely Saunders first applied the term “hospice” to specialized care for dying patients in the UK in 1948. Hospice care was introduced to the U.S, in the mid-60s and did not become a Medicare eligible benefit until 1982. History of hospice care
As defined by Medicare, hospice is a program of care and support for people who are terminally ill (with a life expectancy of 6 months or less if the illness runs its normal course) and their families. Hospice helps people who are terminally ill live comfortably.
- The focus is on comfort (palliative care), not on curing an illness.
- A specially trained team of professionals and caregivers provide care for the “whole person,” including physical, emotional, social, and spiritual needs.
- Services typically include physical care, counseling, medications for relief of pain and suffering, medical equipment, and supplies for the terminal illness and related conditions. Things like diapers are not covered by Medicare although catheters are. Patients and their families should not expect 24/7 physical care from hospice unless the patient is receiving inpatient care. Home health aides can be provided for bathing, etc. but cannot provide total care.
- Care is generally given in the home.
- Family caregivers can get support.
In order to qualify for Medicare’s hospice benefit, you must participate in Medicare Part A and
- Your hospice doctor and your regular doctor (if you have one) certify that you’re terminally ill (you’re expected to live 6 months or less).
- You accept palliative care (for comfort) instead of care to cure your illness.
- You sign a statement choosing hospice care instead of other Medicare-covered treatments for your terminal illness and related conditions.
Medicare will cover the cost of a one-time hospice consultation even if you decide not to elect hospice care. Once you elect hospice care, the first step in the process is development of an individualized care plan. Original Medicare will cover everything you need related to your terminal illness, but the care you get must be from a Medicare-approved hospice provider.
Hospice care is usually given in your home, but it also may be covered in a senior housing community, a nursing home or a specialized hospice inpatient facility. Depending on your terminal illness and related conditions, the plan of care your hospice team creates can include any or all of these services:
- Doctor services
- Nursing care
- Medical equipment (like wheelchairs or walkers)
- Medical supplies (like bandages and catheters)
- Prescription drugs
- Hospice aide and limited homemaker services. At Gilchrist, a large not-for-profit Baltimore area hospice, a volunteer may do light housekeeping but that is all
- Physical and occupational therapy
- Speech-language pathology services
- Social worker services
- Dietary counseling
- Grief and loss counseling for you and your family
- Short-term inpatient care (for pain and symptom management)
- Short-term respite care
- Any other Medicare-covered services needed to manage your terminal illness and related conditions, as recommended by your hospice team.
Note that the above list does not include the cost of room and board in a seniors housing or skilled nursing facility, so the patient or their family may have to cover this cost if routine hospice care cannot be provided at home.
If your usual caregiver (a family member or other caregiver) needs rest, a hospice patient can get inpatient respite care in a Medicare-approved facility (such as a hospice inpatient facility, hospital, or nursing home). Your hospice provider will arrange this for you. You can stay up to 5 days each time you get respite care. You can get respite care more than once, but only on an occasional basis.
Medicare pays the hospice provider for your hospice care. There’s no deductible. You’ll pay:
- Your monthly Medicare Part A (Hospital Insurance) and Medicare Part B (Medical Insurance) premiums.
- A copayment of up to $5 per prescription for outpatient prescription drugs for pain and symptom management.
- 5% of the Medicare-approved amount for inpatient respite care if used.
Medicare won’t cover any of these once your hospice benefit starts:
- Treatment intended to cure your terminal illness and/or related conditions. Talk with your doctor if you’re thinking about getting treatment to cure your illness. You always have the right to stop hospice care at any time.
- Prescription drugs (except for symptom control or pain relief).
- Care from any provider that wasn’t set up by the hospice medical team. You must get hospice care from the hospice provider you chose. All care that you get for your terminal illness and related conditions must be given by or arranged by the hospice team. You can’t get the same type of hospice care from a different hospice, unless you change your hospice provider. However, you can still see your regular doctor or nurse practitioner if you’ve chosen him or her to be the attending medical professional who helps supervise your hospice care.
- Room and board. Medicare doesn’t cover room and board. However, if the hospice team determines that you need short-term inpatient or respite care services that they arrange, Medicare will cover your stay in the facility. You may have to pay a small copayment for the respite stay.
- Care you get as a hospital outpatient (such as in an emergency room), care you get as a hospital inpatient, or ambulance transportation, unless it’s either arranged by your hospice team or is unrelated to your terminal illness and related condition.
The Medicare hospice benefit is paid by original fee-for-service Medicare. To understand how the hospice benefit relates to Medicare Advantage plan, Part B or D coverage speak with Medicare or your hospice provider and you might consult the publication Medicare Hospice Benefits – Medicare Hospice Benefits
A Popular Benefit
Hospice care enjoys wide support from patients and patient advocates who are supportive of patients dying with dignity and having control over the final chapter of their lives. It is supported by policy makers who believe hospice can save Medicare funds by having terminally ill patients avoid expensive procedures at the end of life that often provide little lasting benefit. Mean medical spending during the last 12 months of life is reaching $80,000 in the U.S., with 44.2% spending for hospital care (57.6% is hospital spending during the final three months of life). To the extent hospice care can reduce expensive end of life hospital care it has the potential to reduce growth in Medicare spending. Hospice Impact On Medical Spending
Hospice care is also viewed favorably by investors and for-profit healthcare companies who see it offering stable reimbursement, attractive margins and very attractive growth prospects as Baby Boomers age. Because hospice reimbursement is designed to adequately fund small not-for-profit hospice providers, not-for-profit and for-profit operators with scale can generate an excess revenue/profits from spreading their overhead costs over a large number of patients, thereby generating reasonable margins from hospice reimbursement.
Electing Hospice Care
The key issue for patients and their families in electing hospice care is that doing so requires you to forgo additional curative treatment for the condition that is expected to lead to your death in order to receive funding for palliative care designed to give you a dignified death with minimal pain and suffering. As noted above, In order to qualify for hospice care a physician, typically your primary care doctor or a hospice doctor, certifies that you are expected to live no more than six months if your disease follows its typical progression. With this physician’s certification and your election to shift from curative to hospice/palliative care you will qualify for Medicare hospice benefits or hospice benefits from a private insurer. If you live more than six months in hospice care, the hospice benefit can be extended but Medicare manages this by penalizing operators that have average length of stays in hospice care.
Selecting A Hospice Provider
According to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) Medicare paid about 4,200 different hospice providers for services in 2015. About 60% of these hospice providers were profit-making companies and 40% are not-for-profit (Long-Term Care Providers and Services Users in the United States: Data From the National Study of Long-Term Care Providers, 2013–2014 Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control, Center for Health Statistics, February 2016 – CDC Report On Hospice Services
Hospice providers served approximately 1.3 million patients in 2013 with an average length of stay of 23 days – indicating an average daily census of about 14 patients per hospice.
The statistics above suggest two criteria for selecting a hospice provider 1) for-profit vs. not-for-profit and size. Many hospice providers are small not- for-profit operations. For-profit companies tend to be larger in size, as are some well established not-for-profit organizations, such as Gilchrist Hospice in Baltimore. Smaller operations may offer more personalized care options but larger operations may have their own specially designed dedicated inpatient hospice units and greater resources to Invest in family grief counseling, for example.
Your physician or a social worker/discharge planner at a hospital should be able to recommend or refer you to one or more hospice providers. A simple online search on “finding a hospice provider” results in links to larger for-profit and not-for-profit providers in your area (Heartland, Amedysis and Gilchrist in Baltimore) and links to referral services, such as A Place for Mom, an Internet focused senior housing and care referral company, and the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO). Keep in mind that referral services will only refer you to organizations that are members of that organization or agree to pay a referral fee.
The Medicare.gov/hospice compare website provides ratings for hospice providers with percentage scores for a number of objective and subjective measures including results from user surveys. The site allows you to search for specific providers and provides near particular zip codes. See Medicare Hospice Compare. Some of this data is likely self-reported but still appears useful for comparing providers.
Before committing to a particular hospice provider a prospective patient and their family should ideally meet with the provider to assess the staff who will oversee and deliver care to your loved one, share information about your family’s situation and discuss options for delivering hospice care in a way that best meets your families needs. Care will most likely be delivered at home with family members engaged in the hospice care delivery process. It can also be provided in a seniors housing or skilled nursing facility but this may require the family to pay for the coast of board. If required, typically right at the end of life when 24/7 oversight is needed, the location of care may be shifted to an inpatient hospice care facility and you should understand when and how such a facility might be used. You may wish to check on the location and quality of the inpatient option.
I welcome comments and questions on this blog and hope it aids you finding a good death for you and your loved ones.
Tag: hospice
Layman’s Guide To Post Acute Care
I had a conversation with a friend today who has a relative that is comatose after a surgical procedure. The patient has recently been shifted from a feeding tube though the nose to one connected to the stomach and is about to be transitioned from oxygen through a breathing tube to a ventilator connected directly to the throat via a tracheotomy. This progression is typical for someone who is unable to eat or breath on their own because temporary breathing and feeding tubes over time begin irritate the throat and must be replaced with more direct connections. Once these more permanent breathing and feeding connections are completed, the patient will likely be transitioned from an ICU to a transitional care unit within the hospital and then the hospital and Medicare or a private insurer will likely soon want the patient relocated to from the hospital, which is designed to provide short-term acute care.
While hospital discharge planners or social workers and the patient’s health insurance provider may all have suggestions or recommendations or preferences about where the patient’s post-acute care should be provided, under Medicare and some types of private health insurance the family will have a choice about where post-acute care is provided. This short guide summarizes the options to help you achieve the best result for a loved-one at a stressful time for all concerned.
Types of Facilities – There are four types of post-acute care options, which are typically stand-alone facilities but can also be co-located within a general acute care hospital in some cases. The four types of post-acute care facilities are:
- Rehab Hospital, also called an IRF- Inpatient Rehabilitation Facility
- Long Term Acute Care Hospital, LTAC, sometimes LTACH
- Nursing Home, also called a SNF – Skilled Nursing Facility or in some cases a Transitional Care Facility, which is essentially a SNF located within a hospital
- Hospice, which can be provided in a specialized hospice facility, within a SNF or other medical facility or in someone’s home.
A Rehab Hospital or IRF is designed to provide post-acute care for patients who require and are physically able to participate in a minimum of three hours a day of physical therapy (PT), occupational therapy (OT), and/or speech therapy at least five days per week. Requirements for IRFs call for registered nurse (RN) oversight and availability 24 hours a day and between five and seven and a half nursing hours per patient per day, while the standard for nursing homes is usually between two and a half and four nursing hours per patient per day. IRFs are also going to have regular physician visits and supervision and extensive rehabilitation gyms and specialized rehab equipment and staff. So IRFs generally offer a higher level of care than nursing homes but only those patients who are able to handle at least three hours of therapy per day are able to transition to a IRF. Medicare and most private insurers will pay for IRF care for patient who needs and can tolerate relatively intense therapy following an episode of care in a general acute care hospital.
A Long Term Acute Care Hospital (LTAC) is licensed as a acute care hospital but is designed to care for patients with a 25 – 30 day average length of stay versus less than 5 days in a general acute-care hospital. Typical LTAC patients have multiple co-morbidities, multi organ system failure, and significant loss of independence, most following a traditional hospital stay. LTACs are designed to care for critically ill patients who require specialized, aggressive, goal-directed care over an extended recovery period. So patients on feeding tubes, with tracheotomies and complex, difficult to treat medical conditions are well-suited for care in an LTAC provided there are expectations that the patient’s condition can improve or that their condition needs to be stabilized before stepping down to another setting offer less intense care, such as a SNF or home healthcare. Medicare and most private insurers will pay for LTAC care for medically complex patients who need ICU level care for an extended period following an episode of care in a general acute care hospital and have some prospect for recovery or being stabilized so they can ultimately be cared for at home or in a SNF.
A Nursing Home or Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) in most cases offers two types of care. One is true post-acute care that includes therapy services similar to what is provided in an IRF and some may accommodate complex patients including patients with tracheotomies similar to what may be provided in an LTAC. Some nursing homes have extensive rehab gyms and therapy staff and will have 24/7 RN care and attending physicians. But not all nursing homes provide post-acute care services or take medically complex patients and requirements for nursing hours and physician supervision are typically lower in a SNF than an IRF or LTAC. Nursing homes also offer longer-term nursing care, sometimes call custodial care, for patients who have health conditions that require enough nursing care to make care at home infeasible or who do not have a home or family situation that will allow care at home. Custodial patients may staff for years and there is little expectation that they will recover and return home. Medicare and private insurers will generally pay for a limited period of post-acute care in a SNF following an episode of care in an acute care hospital. But the amount of time for which Medicare will fully cover SNF care is 20 days, after which a co-pay kicks in, and Medicare will not cover long-term custodial care for a patient who is not making progress toward recovery. For patients without long term care insurance the only option for paying for long-term custodial care in a SNF is Medicaid, which generally will only cover payments after all of a patient’s own funds are exhausted.
Home Healthcare is non-facility based option that provides post-acute care for some patients. It can deliver wound care, PT, OT and speech therapy and other types of skilled care but will not provide 24/7 patient monitoring and generally requires support from family members in order for this to be a viable option immediately following a general acute care hospital treatment. Home healthcare often comes into the picture is to provide followup therapy or nursing care after a patient transitions from an IRF, LTAC or SNF to home but is only relatively healthy patients with supportive living situations and families are typically able to get all of their post-acute care from home healthcare. Medicare and private insurances will pay for home healthcare but only for specific skill nursing and therapy services.
Hospice Care provided in a specialized facility, within a senior housing, nursing home or other health facility, or in one’s own home, is intended for patients who are expected to live for six months are less. The care is design to keep the patient comfortable and free from pain and to help family member cope with a loved-ones impending death. While most healthcare providers are reluctant to conclude that additional medical treatment will not allow a patient to get better, hospice care is a very good option once the family and their healthcare providers reach this conclusion. Medicare and most private insurers will pay for hospice care in a variety of settings.
Deciding Where a Love-One Should Receive Post-Acute Care – Important factors to consider include: the type and level of care the patient needs, the quality and location of the facility. The type of care that each facility offers is summarized above and you can discuss the appropriate placement with the care team at the hospital including your physicians, nurses, discharge planners and social workers who usually take primary responsibility for transitioning a patient to post-acute care. There is a tendency to favor facilities offering the highest level of care, such as an LTAC or rehab facility over a nursing home. However, if the patient will does not need or will not be able to tolerate the level of therapy these facilities can provide it may be better to to directly to a nursing home rather than spend a few days or a week in another type of facility and have to move the patient a second time. Many patients will prefer home healthcare to facility-based care but it is important to be realistic about whether the physical conditions of the home and the amount of support family members can provide make this the best first post-acute care option. Location matters because it is important for family members to visit during what may be a multiple week or month period of post-acute care and family members are more likely to visit if a facility is conveniently located. Finally, quality can be assessed by visiting a facility, speaking with discharge planners and social workers, checking online (The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has a 5-star quality rating system that isn’t perfect but can help – https://www.medicare.gov/nursinghomecompare) and in the case of skilled nursing, check with the state Office of Aging ombudsman about any prior complaints.
It will be much easier to evaluate and find space in a facility of your choice if you start looking before your loved-one is about to be discharged. However, if you need more time it is possible to appeal a hospital discharge and generally buy yourself one-three days if you need more time to evaluate and decide upon your best option for post-acute care (see appeals on the Medicare.gov website).
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