Missed Visits, Uncontrolled Pain and Fraud: Report Says Hospice Lacks Oversight

July 31, 2018

(Kaiser Health News) – Elderly patients spent over two weeks in uncontrolled pain or respiratory distress. Acute care was rare on weekends. And recruiters went door to door pitching fraudulent schemes, luring healthy patients to sign up for hospice in exchange for free housecleaning and medicine. These details appear in a report on hospice released Monday by a government watchdog agency calling on federal regulators to ramp up oversight of a booming industry that served 1.4 million Americans in 2016.