National Hospice Study: Patient and Facility Data, [1980-1983]

The purpose of the National Hospice Study was to examine the impact of hospice care on the quality of life of patients and their families and the health care cost incurred by patients. The National Hospice Study consists of two distinct, but interrelated, primary data collection components. The first relates to patient level studies of the costs incurred by patients and their families during the final phases of terminal cancer as well as the quality of life that they experienced during this period. The second component of the study relates to comparisons of the hospices that had received special demonstration funding from the Health Care Financing Adminstration for reimbursement of costs incurred by Medicare patients and those that had not. To address the issue of the desirability of reimbursing for hospice under Medicare, data from a large number of hospice and nonhospice patients were gathered. Patients were identified via the sites of care serving them, both hospice and nonhospice. Three types of data were collected: (1) facility level characteristics for a sample of all hospices nationwide, (2) census of intake and discharge characteristics for all patients served by those hospices during the study period, and (3) an extensive interview schedule regarding the quality of care and adequacy of Medicare reimbursement programs was conducted in both hospice and nonhospice settings with a sample of those patients fulfilling certain selection criteria (as well as their primary care person and family).