Characteristics of Hospice Care Users: Data From the 1996 National Home and Hospice Care Survey

Advance Data 299.  During 1996 there were an estimated 59,400 patients receiving hospice care services from 1,800 hospices and home health care agencies in the United States. These agencies had 393,200 discharges from hospice care during the year prior to the survey, according to a new report titled "Characteristics of Hospice Care Users: Data From the 1996 National Home and Hospice Care Survey." This report presents numbers and percents of hospice care current patients and discharges by selected characteristics of the agencies from which the care was received, patient and discharge characteristics, services provided, types of personnel that provided the services, admission diagnoses, and procedures. The data used for this report are from the National Center for Health Statistics’ 1996 National Home and Hospice Care Survey, a segment of the long-term care component of the National Health Care Survey.

Data Highlights:

Fifty-five percent of the current patients and 50 percent of the discharges were women.

Both current patients and discharges tended to be 65 years of age and over, white, married or widowed, lived in a private or semi-private residence, and had a primary caregiver.

The most common diagnoses at admission were malignant neoplasms and heart disease.

About a fifth of the patients and discharges had a surgical or diagnostic procedure related to their admission for care.

Keywords: National Home and Hospice Care Survey, long-term care, current patients, discharges, malignant neoplasms

This page last reviewed January 11, 2007