An Overview of Home Health and Hospice Care Patients: 1994 National Home and Hospice Care Survey

Advance Data 274.   A new report titled An Overview of Home Health and Hospice Care Patients: 1994 National Home and Hospice Care Survey presents statistics on the use of home health and hospice care services. This report is the third in a series on home health care and hospice agencies, their staff, and the people they serve. Based on data in the report, there are an estimated 2.0 million patients currently enrolled and 5.6 million patients discharged from 10,900 home and hospice care agencies in the United States. Data are collected through the National Home Health and Hospice Care Survey, a segment of the Long-Term Care Component of the National Health Care Survey.

Data Highlights:

The 1994 estimate of 10,900 home care agencies (home health and hospice) represents a 30 percent increase in the number of agencies since 1992.

Approximately 59 percent of all home health patients and 86 percent of all hospice patients were being cared for by nonprofit agencies in 1994.

Of the 1.9 million patients currently receiving home health care, most were predominately elderly, female, white and married, or widowed.

Hospice patients were also predominately elderly. In contrast to home health patients, hospice patients, however, were more equitably distributed by sex (45 percent male and 55 percent female).

This page last reviewed January 11, 2007