Saturday, February 10, 2007
NY Times on open-access hospice
NY Times has a positive article about "open-access" model hospices. (For those of you not familiar with this it is a model where hospices provide/pay for costly and even disease-modifying treatments like chemotherapy, hospitalizations, etc.) Most interesting, to me, is that it seems several private insurers are trialling open-access in an effort to increase the number of hospice enrollees and lengthen hospice length of stay (one also hopes they are planning on publishing their findings on enrollment, LOS, cost, and patient/family satisfaction).
Open-access is not without criticism, much of it about cost of course but also about it changing the nature (or at least the flavor) of hospice. Instead of opining on that I think I'll do my taxes instead and let commenters share their thoughts.
(Multiple readers emailed us about the article--thanks!)
(NY Times articles are usually available free for a week.)
