Medicare's Hospice Benefit: Use and Expenditures, 1996 Cohort

This report presents information on Medicare's hospice benefit — who is using it, how it is being used, what costs are associated with its use, what costs precede hospice enrollment and how these vary by type of enrollee. This information will be important for understanding the role of Medicare's hospice benefit in the context of the other benefits Medicare provides to one of the program's most expensive populations — the terminally ill — and understanding whether the current policies meet the needs of the population enrolling in hospice. Also included are snapshot contrasts of two groups of enrollees — those who were enrolled in HMOs or on Medicaid at least once during the 12 months between July 1995 and July 1996. [35 PDF pages]