Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Hospice Facts and Figures 2010 Released by NHPCO
The National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization has released the annual report on hospice statistics that we all love to quote. The free publication, Hospice Care in America is a good review of the basic statistics we all need to know like:- Average Length of Stay
- Median Length of Stay
- % of US deaths while receiving hospice services
- Patients served by Hospice
- Location of Death (Home, NH/ALF, Inpatient Hospice, Hospital)
- % Cancer diagnosis
- % under age 64 (including pediatrics)
If you want to test your knowledge take the short little quiz on the above questions, or just scroll to the end of the post for the answers. (I will post the results of the survey in an upcoming post)
Are there any other stats you find interesting from this report?
Basically there were no major surprises with the 2010 report. Most of the stats were unchanged from previous years. The one I found odd to have such a major change was the increase in male patients from 43% to 46%. No explanation was given in the report. I can't think of anything that would cause such a profound shift given the numbers.The deaths from kidney disease also increased from 2.8% to 3.8% which is an interesting trend to watch too given the difficulties in getting good early hospice care to ESRD patients because of potentially conflicting Medicare Benefits. General satisfaction rates were also high as usual. So did you take the quiz yet? Here are the answers, don't cheat!
- Average Length of Stay - 69 days
- Median Length of Stay - 21 days
- % of US deaths while receiving hospice services - 42%
- Patients served by Hospice - 1.56 million
- Location of Death (easy to remember 40-30-20-10)
- Home - 40%
- NH/ALF - 29%
- Inpatient Hospice - 21%
- Hospital - 10%
- % Cancer diagnosis - 40%
- % under age 64 (including pediatrics) - 17%