Posted on Wednesday, June 6, 2018 7:26 PM
According to year-end data from Excel Health, both home health and hospice grew in 2017. The hospice market saw the bigger jump with an increase of 6.5 percent in admissions over 2016.
The data shows the number of Medicare beneficiaries rose 2.2 percent to almost 58 million at the end of 2017. The report indicates that number will grow to 92.6 million Medicare beneficiaries over the next three decades.
Hospice had more than 1.3 million Medicare enrollees in 2017, with utilization rates growing over 1.5 percent to an average of 47.7 percent, compared to 46.3 percent in 2016. The average length of hospice stay was 62 days for patients who died or were discharged in 2017, but with considerable variations from state to state.
Forty-nine percent of patients discharged from a hospital received no post-acute care instructions. Those that did, twenty percent were referred to home health, four percent to hospice, five percent to in-patient rehab, twenty two percent to skilled nursing facilities and one percent to long term care.
The report found that 30 percent of patients who received home health instructions did not use them, either because it was subsequently deemed to not be necessary or because they didn’t want to use it. Those patients were 50 percent more likely to be readmitted to hospital than those who received home health instructions and followed them.
Source: NAHC Report
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