Op-Ed | Hospice care, like hospital care, should be held to nonprofit-only status in New York

"Protecting and strengthening the integrity of hospice care is essential to ensuring that terminally ill New Yorkers receive compassionate, appropriate, and high-quality end-of-life care. For that reason, I strongly urge Governor Hochul to sign S3437/A565 to prevent further expansion of for-profit hospice programs in New York State. New York has long recognized that certain healthcare sectors serve a public good and must remain insulated from profit-driven motives. This is why New York's general hospitals are required to operate as nonprofit entities."

"Around 70% of hospice centers across the country are now for profit, even though studies from other states have consistently shown that for profit hospices engage in profit driven practices that reduce the quality of care they offer including cherry-picking patients, reducing staff, offering less services, and aggressively marketing to those who may not need hospice. Opponents of this bill claim that New York's comparatively low hospice utilization rate is evidence that more providers, including for-profit entities are needed."

"This is simply not true. Hospice utilization in New York is low, not because of our number of providers, but because we suffer from a lack of public and professional education about the Medicare hospice benefit, persistent misconceptions about what hospice means for a patient's future, and an over divergence of patients to skilled nursing facilities, which effectively blocks hospice enrollment due to the fact that hospice cannot be elected concurrently with skilled rehabilitation."

Protecting and strengthening hospice care integrity is essential to ensure terminally ill New Yorkers receive compassionate, appropriate, high-quality end-of-life care. S3437/A565 would prevent further expansion of for-profit hospice programs in New York. Around 70% of hospice centers nationwide are for-profit, and studies show for-profit hospices often cherry-pick patients, reduce staffing, offer fewer services, and aggressively market to people who may not need hospice. New York's low hospice utilization stems from lack of public and professional education about Medicare hospice benefits, misconceptions about hospice, and diversion of patients to skilled nursing facilities that block hospice enrollment.

Read at politicsny.com