Associations of Hospice Disenrollment and Hospitalization With Continuous Home Care Provision

To examine rates of hospice disenrollment and posthospice hospitalization among patients who are enrolled in hospices that provide continuous home care (CHC) (CHC hospices) compared with patients who are enrolled in hospices that do not offer CHC (non-CHC hospices).

We performed a retrospective cohort study among Medicare fee-for-service decedents between July and December 2011, who were 66 years and older and had used hospice in their last 6 months of life. We used propensity score matching to account for potential confounding characteristics of hospices. Generalized estimating equation models were applied to estimate between CHC hospices and non-CHC hospices the associations of hospice disenrollment/hospitalization, adjusted for patient characteristics. We also conducted subgroup analyses to examine how the association might have differed by hospice size, and by the percentage of enrollees who received CHC.

After matching, we identified 936 pairs of CHC and non-CHC hospices, well balanced in terms of organizational characteristics. In fully adjusted models, compared with non-CHC hospices, CHC hospices had significantly lower disenrollment rates (adjusted rate ratio, 0.73; 95% confidence interval, 0.60-0.87), and lower hospitalization rates (adjusted rate ratio, 0.79; 95% confidence interval, 0.66-0.95). These associations were significantly more pronounced among larger hospices (those with >175 enrollees during study period), and among hospices in which at least 7.3% of enrollees used CHC.

CHC hospices had significantly lower rates of hospice disenrollment and posthospice hospitalization, suggesting CHC service available may enable higher quality of end-of-life care.