Hospice providers serving assisted living residents: Association of higher volume with lower quality

Assisted living (AL) community caregivers are known to report lower quality of hospice care. However, little is known about hospice providers serving AL residents and factors that may contribute to, and explain, differences in quality. We examined the association between hospice providers' AL patient-day volume and their quality ratings based on Hospice Item Set (HIS) and Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) Hospice Surveys.

This cross-sectional study employed information from the Medicare Compare website and Medicare claims data. Medicare-eligible AL residents were identified using previously validated methods and merged with hospice claims. Linear probability models adjusting for county fixed effects were used to examine the association between hospice provider AL volume, measured as the share of annual hospice patient days from AL residents, and quality measures obtained from HIS and CAHPS. Models controlled for hospice providers' profit status and daily patient census.

Higher AL-volume hospice providers were 7 percentage points more likely to have caregivers reporting lower median scores on domains of pain assessment, dyspnea treatment, and emotional support. Their caregivers also reported lower scores in team communications and training family to provide care. Higher AL-volume hospice providers also were 5 percentage points less likely to get higher aggregated scores from all CAHPS domains and 7 percentage points less likely to have higher HIS composite scores.

Hospice providers serving higher volumes of AL patient days had lower quality scores. In order to identify targeted opportunities for quality improvement, research is needed to understand why lower quality providers are concentrated in the AL market.