The reporting project started out with a look at the hospice industry and wound up being mostly about the increasing burden home hospice puts on unpaid, family caregivers.
The first story reveals that hospice has become all the rage, but we’re now starting to hear even some of the biggest boosters question whether hospice puts too much on families to care for loved ones at home.
The second installment finds that dementia now accounts for the bulk of Medicare’s spending on hospice, and that’s a problem because the benefit was designed for cancer patients in pain. Dementia sufferers have very different needs. Namely, a sitter. Hospice doesn’t really do that.
The final piece explains that while most of us say we want to die at home, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Broadly, this series found some problems with the conventional wisdom about the benefits in hospice.