Characteristics of Hospice Care Discharges: United States, 1993-94

Advance Data 287.  An estimate of 328,000 discharges were made from hospice care from 1,300 hospices and home health agencies in 1993-94, according to a new report titled "Characteristics of Hospice Care Discharges: United States, 1993-94." This report presents numbers and percents of discharges shown by selected characteristics of the agencies from which patients were discharged, by selected patient characteristics, by services provided, by types of personnel that provided the services, and by diagnoses of these discharged patients. The data used for this report are from the National Center for Health Statistics' 1994 National Home and Hospice Care Survey, a segment of the long-term care component of the National Health Care Survey.

Data Highlights:

Death was the reason for 88 percent of the discharges.

Fifty-two percent of discharges were for men, 73 percent were for patients 65 years of age and over, 79 percent were white, 49 percent were married, and 30 percent were widowed.

Eighty-three percent of the discharged patients were living in a private or semiprivate residence during their care and 95 percent had a primary caregiver.

These discharges had an average 2.2 diagnoses at admission; 69 percent had a primary diagnosis of a malignant neoplasm; and 8 percent had a primary diagnosis of heart disease.

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

This page last reviewed January 11, 2007