Doctors are asked to sign things all the time: Prescriptions, home nursing care plans, death certificates, diabetic shoe forms.
Less frequently, hospice verifications.
Why was I asked to sign hospice orders for Mr. Taylor? Sure, he was old. Eighty-seven.
He’d survived decades of high blood pressure, two major surgeries, unintentional weight loss, chronic pain, headaches, even a benign brain tumor. But I had never referred him to hospice.
I wouldn’t have diagnosed him as “terminal,” i.e. expected to live six months or less. As far as I could tell, he’d just keep on truckin’ for another year or three.
So why was I being asked to sign hospice paperwork for him? How did this come about?
“Mr. Taylor, why are you in hospice? Are you dying?”
-Not that he knew of. He’d just been told that he’d get more ‘home services’ that way.
“Who set this up for you?”
-It was one of those “home doctors.” Geriatric care providers that offer house calls to infirm seniors when it’s too hard for them to come to a doctor’s office.
Thing is, he was still plenty able to come to my office. And did so regularly.
Apparently, though, the opportunity to get more home services was too good to pass up.
The agency that was providing him at-home medical services referred him to a for-profit hospice firm–one that could collect the daily Medicare fee for a hospice enrollee.
Is it any wonder, then, that we’ve seen a surge in hospice enrollments in the last few years?
Finally, someone has written something about it. Thank you, Washington Post.
John H. Schumann, MD (@GlassHospital) is a general internist and medical educator at the University of Oklahoma School of Community Medicine in Tulsa, OK . He is also author of the blog, GlassHospital , where this post originally appeared.
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