Fatal Fraud? - More Settlements by Commercial Hospices of Allegations They Enrolled Non-Terminal Patients
DiscussionThere are more cases being reported in which hospices, particularly those owned and run by for-profit corporations, have enrolled patients who were not terminally ill. These enrollments may be motivated by the desire for more money, but they put patients at risk. Hospice patients may receive large doses of psychoactive drugs and narcotics, which may lead to adverse effects up to and including death. Hospice patients may not, however, receive treatments for new acute problems, even if those problems are potentially curable. Therefore, hospice patients may die from untreated infections that otherwise might respond to antibiotics. Aggressive pain medication and withholding treatment of infections make sense as part of palliative care for terminally ill patients, e.g., those with terminal cancer. But they make no sense for patients with longer life expectancy.Nonetheless, such abuses by hospices get little press coverage, seemingly are ignored by health care regulators and law enforcement, and are almost completely anechoic in the health care, medical and health policy literature. If a measure of society is how it cares for the most vulnerable patients, the US laissez faire approach to for-profit hospices suggests a society in decline.To repeat what I wrote the last time for-profit hospices were (barely) in the news for enrolling the wrong patients,... In my humble opinion, we should return control of direct patient care, especi...
Source: Health Care Renewal - Category: Health Management Tags: hospices Oak Hill Capital Partners private equity Source Type: blogs
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