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This paper traces the development and evaluation of day care hospice provision through analysis of the available literature. The CD-ROM was utilized to access and review the Medline, CINAHL and Healthstar databases. In addition, a hand search of Progress in Palliative Care was conducted. The literature describes the provision of a service within a day hospice, and access to day hospice services. Issues regarding the provision of a day hospice as a mechanism to meet consumer needs are explored. The literature reveals little evaluation of evidence-based practice or of the cost-effectiveness of day hospice provision. There is a dearth of research relating to day care, evaluation studies in particular. It is clearly important that future research compares outcomes with other models of service provision.

To examine the use of palliative care services by patients affected by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in hospices which do not specialize in the care of HIV patients, a tape-recorded, semistructured interview was carried out in 12 hospices in the UK. The interview explored concerns about such provision, as well as actual issues encountered. The study revealed that all 12 hospices accepted referrals for people affected by HIV and had clear working practices on infection control. between 1990 and 1996, 48 individuals affected by HIV had contact with the hospices. The number of referrals was not related to the size of the hospice. Thirty-nine individuals had a total of 655 days of inpatient care (range 1-35 days); mean length of stay 12.7 days. Twenty-four (62%) died during their first admission. Referrals came from disparate sources and this affected the amount and type of specialist HIV support available to the hospice. The paucity of referrals raised concerns in most of the units as to how to maintain skills. Issues about maintaining confidentiality of diagnosis in a multiprofessional team, and after death were highlighted. All units expressed concerns about the impact on fundraising of HIV-related admissions. Overall it was felt that the hospice units were failing to meet the palliative care needs of the majority of people affected by HIV or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in the region. Possible reasons for this are given.

The provision, management, and financing of care for patients with irreversible diseases has become increasingly complex in this era of advanced medical technology. With enhanced capabilities of medicine to prolong life, clinical practice has taken on legal and ethical dimensions that reach beyond the traditional scope of medicine. This paper demonstrates that hospice represents a major area of public health practice and research. It argues for enhanced involvement of public health practitioners and academics in the design and evaluation of efforts to encourage appropriate use of hospice for patients with irreversible diseases. The physician assisted living intervention in Connecticut represents one such effort. However, ongoing educational efforts targeted at both the public and health care providers are needed to ensure that all those with irreversible diseases fully understand and have access to hospice care at the end of life.

What happens when a patient isn't ready to accept hospice care? Or when curative rather than palliative care is needed? Some patients need the skills of a hospice nurse in a curative setting--which calls for a special care team.

This document corrects the final rule published August 8, 1997 (62 FR 42859), that established a methodology to update the wage index used to adjust Medicare payment rates for hospice care included in the new wage index, to be effective October 1, 1997. This notice corrects the wage index entry for Cherokee, GA.

Reports have begun to proliferate throughout the world which describe various models of pediatric hospice care. While encouraging, these reports identify universal obstacles that continue to compromise effective care. Challenges persist in areas of pain management, medical ethics, program administration, cost analysis, staff development and bereavement follow-up. Cooperative efforts are encouraged to address these issues.

Objective: To investigate charge and payment differentials for home health services across different payors., Data Sources: The 1992 National Home and Hospice Care Survey, a nationally representative survey of home and hospice care agencies and their patients, collected by the National Center for Health Statistics., Study Design: We compare the average charge for a Medicare home health visit to the average charge for patients with other sources of payment. In making such comparisons, we control for differences across payors in service mix and agency characteristics., Principal Findings: Agencies charge various payors different amounts for similar services, and Medicare is consistently charged more than other payors., Conclusions: Findings imply the potential existence of payment differentials across payors for home health services, with Medicare and privately insured patients likely to be paying more than others for similar services. Such conclusions raise the possibility that, as in other segments of the healthcare market, cost-shifting and price discrimination might exist within the home health industry. Future research should explore these issues, along with the question of whether Medicare is paying too much for home health services.

Cancer is primarily a disease of the elderly and the palliation of both disease- and treatment-related symptoms is of importance in the practice of cancer medicine in all patients. Many older patients are treated within community hospitals, in which anticancer therapies are less likely to be given and in which the palliation of symptoms should be of primary importance. Many oncologists struggle with the palliation of symptoms in patients who are near the end of life. This is despite the considerable energies that are spent in palliating symptoms in patients who are receiving anticancer therapies at all disease stages. The management of pain has advanced considerably recently with improvements in pain assessment and pharmacologic interventions. However, elderly patients are less likely than younger patients to receive proper pain management. Elderly patients also are less likely to take opioids for pain because of their attitudes and beliefs. Fatigue, dyspnea, and psychologic issues also are of importance in the management of elderly cancer patients both during anticancer therapy and near the time of death. Some elderly cancer patients die in the care of a hospice, although many are not referred to this service. There are many barriers to the provision of palliative medicine and these may be related to health practitioners, to the patients themselves, or to the health care system of which they are part. The increased educational efforts of health professionals are needed to ensure that all patients, including the elderly, have adequate palliation of their cancer-related symptoms.

Objective: To examine the impact of home care on hospital days., Data Sources: Search of automated databases covering 1964-1994 using the key words "home care," "hospice," and "healthcare for the elderly." Home care literature review references also were inspected for additional citations., Study Selection: Of 412 articles that examined impact on hospital use/cost, those dealing with generic home care that reported hospital admissions/cost and used a comparison group receiving customary care were selected (N = 20)., Study Design: A meta-analytic analysis used secondary data sources between 1967 and 1992., Data Extraction: Study characteristics that could have an impact on effect size (i.e., country of origin, study design, disease characteristics of study sample, and length of follow-up) were abstracted and coded to serve as independent variables. Available statistics on hospital days necessary to calculate an effect size were extracted. If necessary information was missing, the authors of the articles were contacted., Methods: Effect sizes and homogeneity of variance measures were calculated using Dstat software, weighted for sample size. Overall effect sizes were compared by the study characteristics described above., Principal Findings: Effect sizes indicate a small to moderate positive impact of home care in reducing hospital days, ranging from 2.5 to 6 days (effect sizes of -.159 and -.379, respectively), depending on the inclusion of a large quasi-experimental study with a large treatment effect. When this outlier was removed from analysis, the effect size for studies that targeted terminally ill patients exclusively was homogeneous across study subcategories; however, the effect size of studies that targeted nonterminal patients was heterogeneous, indicating that unmeasured variables or interactions account for variability., Conclusion: Although effect sizes were small to moderate, the consistent pattern of reduced hospital days across a majority of studies suggests for the first time that home care has a significant impact on this costly outcome.

The aim of this work was to carry out a cost evaluation of the home care programme for terminally ill cancer patients run by the Istituto Oncologico Romagnolo (I.O.R.) in the areas of Forlì, Cesena, Ravenna and Rimini (Romagna, Italy). To determine effective home care direct costs, we first selected 1 week of care as an observation unit. We then proceeded to assess the medical and nursing care units together with the clinical protocols administered for each patient. The Karnofsky Performance Status (KPS) was also assessed weekly. In this way, we calculated care costs for each patient and for each week as the sum of medical costs, nursing costs, treatment costs and other costs. A consecutive series of 574 patients were involved in the study from 1 April 1994 to 31 March 1995. A total of 5164 patient-weeks of care was provided, with an average cost per week of 177.6 Ecu. This weekly cost increased in the last 100 days of life (week -15 = 179.5 Ecu; week -8 = 188.3 Ecu; week -2 = 221.0 Ecu; P < 0.001). When single components were analysed in relation to total cost (treatment protocols, physician and nursing care) the increased global cost was found to be mainly attributable to the intensification in nursing care (21.8% of costs in week -15 vs 27.3% of costs in week -2). Examination of the relation between the cost of 1 week of care and KPS values clearly shows that healthcare costs increased as KPS decreased (from 152.2 Ecu with KPS > or = 60 to 292.6 Ecu with KPS < or = 20; P < 0.001). Home care costs were also seen to vary with some clinical characteristics and symptoms present when patients entered the study: asthenia, anorexia, nausea/vomiting, bedsores. Given the good results of home care for cancer patients in terms of quality of life, this method of cost accounting for home-care providers can help to monitor the rising cost of assistance and confirm the cost effectiveness of this type of care.

Managed care organizations often are unaware of the services that are unique to hospice--for example, the contribution of volunteers, the need to enroll patients at an appropriate stage in their illness, and the potential cost savings of dying at home rather than in the hospital. Hospices need to undertake educational campaigns to help ensure their inclusion in a managed care system.

Explicit rationing decisions are being made to encompass a wide range of health care issues. Voluntary euthanasia has largely been excluded from this debate due to, in my view, the emotive nature of the issue. Euthanasia is an issue in which economists have been largely excluded and in which ethicists and philosophers dominate. It is the purpose of this paper to review the economic and ethical literature on euthanasia and to discuss their compatibility within the debate on euthanasia. The potential cost savings by the use of advance directives, do-not-resuscitate orders, and futile care withdrawal are then reviewed, as are the potential cost savings created by hospice care. As a conclusion, the ethical and economic arguments are then balanced to assess their compatibility. It is the contention of this paper that reducing medical care costs near the end of life should not be a taboo subject, and that rationing decisions could focus on an exploration of this area and the approaches to it, which are ethically justifiable and economically worthwhile. The introduction of a policy of voluntary euthanasia could have a large impact on the rationing of health care resources whilst also promoting patient choice and an arena for a more dignified death.

With the renaissance of interest in how best to care for patients with terminal illness comes the need to recognize palliative care and hospice programs as the completion of comprehensive cancer care, not as its antithesis. In practical terms, admission to a hospice program is appropriate when efforts to control the biologic disease have ceased to be helpful and the primary medical focus is on symptom control and quality of life. In this article, the authors explore the goals of palliative care, review the transition to a hospice program, and assess the Medicare Hospice Benefit. Furthermore, they reflect on the importance of and barriers to the appropriate adoption of palliative care programs as well as palliative care education in oncology.

Is hospice cost-effective? What is perfectly clear is that hospice care overall provides different care than conventional care for the dying. There is much more home care, aimed at goals of comfort, dignity, and remaining at home, and that care is distributed over longer periods of time. There is less hospital care and less anticancer therapy. Nonhospice oncologic care provides more hospital services, particularly in the last month of life, and more effort to directly attack the malignant disease. There will always be those individuals whose goals and medical condition at a particular time make one type of care the best choice for that person. Current research strongly supports hospice care as cost-saving in the last month of life. The overall effect of hospice care on costs appears to be weakly positive. This is despite the fact that hospice benefits under Medicare include absence of co-payment, medications for the primary condition, and substantially more supportive services, which represent extra value and decreased out-of-pocket expenses to the consumer. A factor strongly favoring the development of cost-effective programs is the fact that most hospices began and developed as capitated systems of care. Thus the benefits derived from providers working with patients to control costs have accrued over time. The not-for-profit structures led savings to be put back into patient care, allowing more help for families and patients. An unresolved bias of available research is the question of the extent to which hospice patients are self-selected at the time of entry for their low interest in intensive and expensive services. The most positive estimates of cost-savings in hospice have required case-mix or time-of-entry adjustments to demonstrate savings. There is little support for cost-savings in the raw data comparing total costs in hospice and conventional care groups. However, there is also no evidence that hospice care adds to costs of care for the dying. Differences in outcomes between hospice- and conventional-care have been modest. Satisfaction with care has often been higher in hospice care, but care giver burden may also be higher. Other outcome measures have been inconsistently affected. The task of measuring differences is a difficult one. Hospice patients themselves are largely unavailable for measurement during the most critical periods of care, and proxy measures of benefit are necessary. Families also tend to be grateful (or critical) around the death of a loved one; this is related to complex family relationships and emotions not likely to be influenced by any health care program. It should also be noted that the task of measuring the success of hospice care has largely used measures originally developed for understanding the impact of conventional oncologic care. The tools for understanding the effects of spiritual counseling or homemaker assistance are much less well developed. The initial goals of the Medicare hospice benefit appear to have been met: a choice is available that responds to the needs and concerns of many dying people and their families, at no additional cost to the taxpayer. In addition, millions of families have received the benefit of the lower out-of-pocket costs for health services and medications. They have benefited from the broader definition of health which made simple, continuous support services such as homemaking and personal care available at no charge. The question of hospice cost-effectiveness would seem to be a question of the past. Other questions offer even more substantial challenges to continuing hospice care as it is now offered and into the future. There are no data to allow a critique of the current structure of hospice services, or to support the link between individual components of service and outcomes. This leaves the hospice concept open to considerable manipulation.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED)

The emergence of AIDS and the aging of the population, with the numerous malignant and debilitating maladies associated with growing older, have focused attention on the provision of cost-effective quality care by hospice and palliative care programs. Hospice and palliative care is a venerated system of care, which uses an interdisciplinary approach to address the medical, psychosocial, and spiritual issues that arise in the treatment of terminally ill patients. This interdisciplinary stratagem for symptom control is necessary to ensure that dying patients and their families are afforded dignity and quality of life through death and the period of familial bereavement. Although death is dominant in palliative situations, terminal care requires an affirmation of life and a recognition that dying is not an aberration of medical care but a natural and normal process. Palliative care, however, also requires a personal acceptance of death and an acknowledgment that dying does not denote a failure to provide good medical care but, rather, calls for an acquiescence that curative treatment is no longer feasible. Accordingly, the terminal state is an integral process and a time to reconcile differences so that patient and family may accept death with a minimum of physical, spiritual, and psychosocial anguish. This article discusses the various precepts cardinal to hospice and palliative care, including the philosophy of terminal care, the management of pain, the adverse effects of analgesic medications, the management of nonpain symptoms, the use of terminal sedation, and the stages of familial bereavement.

The cost to a hospital pharmacy department of providing pharmaceutical services for a hospice program was studied. Drug acquisition costs were tabulated for all prescriptions dispensed to patients in the hospice program from April 1, 1992, to March 31, 1993. Direct time studies were conducted to determine the average personnel time involved in dispensing a prescription for a hospice patient. To determine the personnel time associated with auxiliary activities, self-reporting and work-sampling techniques were used. Indirect and delivery costs were also calculated. Relevant resource inputs were identified, measured, and valued by using both observation and pharmacy records. A total of 5640 hospice prescriptions were dispensed by the outpatient pharmacy; these represented 30% of all prescriptions dispensed. The average cost of dispensing a hospice prescription was $14.91 (total annual costs less drug acquisition costs). The total annual cost of providing pharmaceutical services to the hospice's patients was $196,607, and the total annual reimbursement received from the hospice program and self-paying patients was $155,623; therefore, costs exceeded revenues by $40,984. The cost to a pharmacy department of providing pharmaceutical services to patients in a hospice program substantially exceeded revenues. Greater efficiencies, a change in the pricing structure, or both may be necessary.

Congress introduced the Rural Health Care Transition (RHCT) Grant Program in 1989 to assist financially troubled, small rural hospitals. This article discusses grant effects on the second cohort of hospitals to complete their 3-year grants. Although three-quarters of the grantees implemented all or most of their goals, 11 percent could not implement a viable project. Grantees added or upgraded 523 services with the help of their grants, especially outpatient and social services, most of them financially self-supporting. Except among the largest hospitals, there was no evidence that the grants improved grantee finances. Management appeared unaffected by the grants.

Home care agencies need to plan their position in the industry carefully and consider all available options for organizing their operations and allocating costs. This article outlines some of the many options for cost allocations.

Healthcare decisionmakers in acute settings might well benefit from lessons learned over two decades of hospice experience providing community-based, cost-effective care. Now the hospice concepts of interdisciplinary symptom management and transition counseling are being made available to patients and families long before they reach the traditional six-month prognosis entry point.

Hospice is an option for patients with terminal illness of all types. The advent of the Medicare hospice benefit has led to a rise in numbers of hospice programs as well as hospice expenditure. Terminal care provided through hospice has a demonstrable cost advantage over conventional terminal care. This difference may dissipate as Medicare hospice expenditure continues to rise. An individual hospice program can define its mission within broad guidelines. A program electing to serve all terminally ill patients regardless of diagnosis can occasionally expect to be cast in the role of long term care-provider when six-month survival is exceeded. Precision in prediction of six-month survival would benefit patients and remove one major obstacle to participation by many primary care physicians. Prognostic techniques are being developed that, thus far, have proven no better than physician judgement in assigning risk or predicting survival. Hospice may provide a setting for clinical research of prognostication. The interdisciplinary team can facilitate hospice care and provide support to individual team members. Care of terminally ill non-cancer patients may require added human resources and alteration of team structure to cope with increased service needs and lengths of stay which may be likely to exceed those of cancer patients.