Center to Advance Palliative Care

There have been discussions about this on the forum in the "Hospital and Hospice Partnerships" section. In direct response to your questions; Patients can be transitioned to Hospice GIP (General Inpatient Care) if they meet medicare hospice criteria for the GIP rate. This would require the hospital to have a contract with a hospice program. There have been discussions re: hospital mortality statistics and there are several sources that determine hospital mortality. The primary reasons that have been sited, beyond the obvious of wanting to provide the appropriate level of care and services when a patient is predicatably dying, are to improve hospital mortality statistics and for financial reasons. The financial benefit is creating another revenue stream for patients that have most likely exceeded reimbursement for the acute level of care. Please see the "Hospital and Hospice Partnerships" section for more details and discussion. Sharol Herr, RN, MSEd, CHPN; Nurse Clinician/Education Coordinator; Mount Carmel Health Palliative Care Leadership Center; Columbus, Ohio.