Hospice enrollment policies may turn away high-cost patients

The current per-diem Medicare pays hospices to treat terminally ill patients may be preventing those with more complicated healthcare needs from using the services, reported Kaiser Health News. According to a new study in the journal Health Affairs, the rise of for-profit hospices have contributed to a growing number of patients being turned away because they have costly needs, such as palliative chemotherapy and intravenous feeding tubes. Article