The academic hospice

The academic hospice is a recent development in health care. Hospice programs and hospitals evolved from the same historical roots in Greek and Roman medicine. The academic hospital emerged as a place where patient care, education, and research are pursued as inextricable parts of the mission. The unique role of the academic medical center in health care is supported by the government, the medical profession, and the public. This article provides a perspective on the emergence of the academic hospice. Dr. Cicely Saunders, who died on 14 July 2005, founded the first such hospice in London, England, in 1967. The authors show that the philosophy of hospice care has the same historical roots as standard health care and describe those elements that distinguish academic hospice programs from other kinds of hospice programs. Finally, the authors note that demographic and economic challenges in the United States and elsewhere only increase the need for academic hospice programs.     

Racial differences in location before hospice enrollment and association with hospice length of stay

African Americans are less likely than Whites to enroll in hospice. In addition, patients are often referred to hospice very close to death, when they may not have time to take advantage of the full range of hospice services. Understanding how race and location before hospice enrollment are related to hospice length of stay (LOS) may inform the development of interventions to increase timely access to hospice care. Using data from a national hospice provider, African Americans and Whites admitted to routine home hospice care in a private residence between January 1, 2000, and December 31, 2003, were identified. Logistic regression was used to examine the association between race and hospice preadmission location (hospital vs other locations) and preadmission location and hospice LOS (≤7 days vs >7 days) after adjusting for demographic and hospice use variables. Of 43,869 enrollees, 15.3% were African American. One to 2 days before hospice enrollment, African Americans were more likely than Whites to be in the hospital than in all other locations (48.6% vs 32.3%, P<.001; adjusted odds ratio=1.83, 95% confidence interval=1.73-1.95). Regardless of race, those whose preadmission location was the hospital were more likely than those from other locations to die 7 days or less after hospice enrollment. Initiatives to improve end-of-life care should focus on increasing timely access to hospice referrals in settings outside of the hospital. Future research should examine whether racial differences in hospice preadmission location reflect differences in preferences for care or disparities in timely access to hospice referrals in non-acute care settings.     

Home hospice care.

Home hospice care, which helps patients with terminal illnesses remain at home, is becoming more common and accepted in the United States. The Medicare hospice benefit reimburses hospices for the care of elderly patients. The goal of hospices is to help the patient and family remain in control of the dying process as much as possible. Palliative care rather than the extension of life is emphasized. Hospice techniques for controlling symptoms such as pain, nausea, and vomiting are discussed in this article.     

Psychiatry and HIV hospice care

Hospice care relies on a variety of approaches to heal the mind and the soul, if not the body. While hospice care has been well developed in the United States and the United Kingdom, it has overlooked the crucial tool of psychiatry in responding to the mental health needs of dying residents. Many of the psychiatrist's roles are being handled by social workers, psychologists, and volunteers who are not trained to provide a deeper understanding of the complex picture of organic brain dysfunction, side effects of medical or psychiatric drugs, and psychiatric effects of opportunistic infections or cancers. Psychiatrists are trained to evaluate both the physical and psychiatric pieces of the whole patient picture, enabling a more precise understanding of the effects of dementia, grief, opportunistic infections, substance abuse, HIV treatment, and psychopharmacologic agents. The Psychiatrists Concerned About AIDS organization is working to overcome the exclusion of psychiatrists from acute and palliative care, and thus, resolve the split between psychiatry and hospice care.     

"I'm not ready for hospice": strategies for timely and effective hospice discussions

Hospice programs offer unique benefits for patients who are near the end of life and their families, and growing evidence indicates that hospice can provide high-quality care. Despite these benefits, many patients do not enroll in hospice, and those who enroll generally do so very late in the course of their illness. Some barriers to hospice referral arise from the requirements of hospice eligibility, which will be difficult to eliminate without major changes to hospice organization and financing. However, the challenges of discussing hospice create other barriers that are more easily remedied. The biggest communication barrier is that physicians are often unsure of how to talk with patients clearly and directly about their poor prognosis and limited treatment options (both requirements of hospice referral) without depriving them of hope. This article describes a structured strategy for discussing hospice, based on techniques of effective communication that physicians use in other "bad news" situations. This strategy can make hospice discussions both more compassionate and more effective.     

Palliative care and hospice in advanced heart failure

Advanced heart failure (HF) is a disease process that carries a high burden of symptoms, suffering, and death. Palliative care can complement traditional care to improve symptom amelioration, patient-caregiver communication, emotional support, and medical decision making. Despite a growing body of evidence supporting the integration of palliative care into the overall care of patients with HF and some recent evidence of increased use, palliative therapies remain underused in the treatment of advanced HF. Review of the literature reveals that although barriers to integrating palliative care are not fully understood, difficult prognostication combined with caregiver inexperience with end-of-life issues specific to advanced HF is likely to contribute. In this review, we have outlined the general need for palliative care in advanced HF, detailed how palliative measures can be integrated into the care of those having this disease, and explored end-of-life issues specific to these patients.     

Geographic variation in hospice use prior to death

OBJECTIVES: To examine national variation in use of the Medicare hospice benefit by older individuals before their death, and to identify individual characteristics and local market factors associated with hospice use. DESIGN: Retrospective analysis of Medicare administrative data. SETTING: Hospice care. PARTICIPANTS: Older Medicare enrollees who died in 1996. MEASUREMENTS: Rate of hospice use per 1,000 older Medicare beneficiary deaths. RESULTS: Overall, 155 of every 1,000 older Medicare beneficiaries who die use hospice before death. This rate is significantly higher among younger older persons (P < .001), non-blacks (P < .001), persons living in wealthier areas (P < .001), and persons in urban areas (P < .001). Areas with a higher proportion of non-cancer diagnoses among hospice users have higher rates of hospice use for both cancer and non-cancer reasons than areas with a majority of hospice users having cancer diagnoses (P < .001). Hospice use is higher in areas with fewer hospital beds per capita (P < .001), areas with lower in-hospital death rates (P < .001), and areas with higher HMO enrollment (P < .001). Rates of hospice use are also positively related to average reimbursements for health care (P < .001) and to physicians per capita (P < .001). In the largest metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), rates of hospice use vary more than 11-fold from a low of 35.15 (Portland, ME) to a high of 397.2 per 1,000 deaths (Ft. Lauderdale, FL). CONCLUSIONS: The wide variation in hospice use suggests that there is great potential to increase the number of users of the Medicare hospice benefit.     

Racial differences in hospice revocation to pursue aggressive care

BACKGROUND: Hospice provides supportive care to terminally ill patients at the end of life. However, some enrollees leave hospice before death in search of therapies that may prolong survival. Because of a greater preference for life-sustaining therapies at the end of life, African American patients may be more likely than white patients to withdraw from hospice to seek life-prolonging therapies. METHODS: In a secondary data analysis of African American and white patients discharged from VITAS hospice programs between January 1, 1999, and December 31, 2003, we used logistic regression to examine the association between race and discharge disposition defined as hospice revocation to pursue aggressive care (eg, emergency medical care, chemotherapy, or invasive medical intervention) vs all other discharges. We used a Cox proportional hazards model to examine survival at 1 year after hospice revocation in a subgroup of enrollees from Florida hospice programs. RESULTS: Of the 166 197 enrollees, 2.8% revoked hospice to pursue aggressive care, and African American patients were more likely than white patients to do so (4.5% vs 2.5%; P< .001). In multivariate analysis, African American patients had a 70% higher odds of leaving hospice to pursue life-prolonging therapies (odds ratio, 1.70; 95% confidence interval, 1.57-1.84). In the subgroup analysis, 48.4% of the enrollees who revoked hospice to pursue life-prolonging therapies were still alive at 1 year. CONCLUSIONS: African American patients were more likely than white patients to revoke hospice to pursue life-prolonging therapies. Models of health care that couple curative and palliative therapies may be more attractive to African American patients and more effective at maximizing continuity throughout life-limiting illness.     

Decisions for hospice care in patients with advanced cancer

OBJECTIVES: To identify factors that may influence the decision of whether to enter a hospice program or to continue with a traditional hospital approach in patients with advanced cancer and to understand their decision-making process. DESIGN: Cross-sectional structured interview. SETTING: One community-based hospice and three university-based teaching hospitals. PARTICIPANTS: Two hundred thirty-four adult patients diagnosed with advanced lung, breast, prostate, or colon cancer with a life expectancy of less than 1 year: 173 hospice patients and 61 nonhospice patients receiving traditional hospital care. MEASUREMENTS: Hospice and nonhospice patients' demographic, clinical, and other patient-related characteristics were compared. Multivariate analysis was then conducted to identify variables associated with the hospice care decision in a logistic regression model. Information sources regarding hospice care and people involved in the hospice decision were identified. RESULTS: Patients receiving hospice care were significantly older (average age 69 vs 65 years, P =.009) and less educated (average 11.9 vs 12.9 years, P =.031) and had more people in their households (average 1.66 vs 1.16 persons, P =.019). Hospice patients had more comorbid conditions (1.30 vs 0.93, P =.035) and worse activities of daily living scores (7.01 vs 6.23, P =.030) than nonhospice patients. Hospice patients were more realistic about their disease course than their nonhospice counterparts. Patients' understanding of their prognoses affected their perceptions of the course of their disease. Hospice patients preferred quality of life to length of life. In the multivariate analysis, lower education level and greater number of people in the household were associated with the decision to enter hospice. A healthcare provider first told most of those who entered hospice about hospice. Families largely made the final decision to enter hospice (42%), followed by patients themselves (28%) and physicians (27%). CONCLUSION: The decision to enter hospice is related to demographic, clinical, and other patient-related characteristics. This study suggests that the decision-making process for hospice care in patients with advanced cancer is multidimensional. The healthcare community may better meet the end-of-life care needs of advanced cancer patients through enhanced communication with patients and families, including providing accurate prognoses and better understanding of patients' preferences and values.     

The case for hospice care in long-term care environments

Hospice care typically is underused in long-term care facilities. Although these programs do provide other quality services, routine measurement of important parameters of end-of-life care, such as pain control, dyspnea, and spiritual and psychosocial issues, should also occur. Health care providers working in long-term care facilities should be held accountable for high-quality care for dying residents. In this environment, the benefits of hospice or hospicelike services may become immediately apparent. Continued attention to changes in the Medicare Hospice Benefits to improve patient access to hospice services and health care delivery for those living in long-term care facilities is warranted.