Characteristics of Patients Receiving Hospice Care Services: United States, 1994

Advance Data 282.  An estimate of 328,000 discharges were made from 1,300 hospice and home health agencies in 1994 according to a new report "Characteristics of Patients Receiving Hospice Care Services: United States, 1994." This report presents estimated numbers and percents of hospice care discharges by characteristics of the agencies, patient characteristics, services provided, types of personnel that provided the services, and diagnoses of the discharges. The data used for this report are from the National Center for Health Statistics' 1994 National Home and Hospice Care Survey.

Data Highlights:

Fifty-two percent of discharges were for men and seventy-three percent were for patients 65 years of age and over.

Eighty-two percent of the discharged patients were living in a private or semi-private residence during their care, and ninety-five percent had a primary care giver.

Primary diagnoses for discharges were malignant neoplasm (69 percent) and heart disease (8 percent). Each discharged patient had an average of 2.2 diagnoses at the time of admission.

Keywords: National Home and Hospice Care Survey, long-term care, functional status, malignant neoplasms, heart disease

This page last reviewed January 11, 2007