Hospice Care

Information from the NIH and CDC

People enrolled

Growth of hospice users

126%

1.5 M

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97.3%

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97.4%

100%

99.9%

Social work

Physical, occupational, or speech therapy

Medical infographic

Hospice

Statistics on patients enrolled in hospice care

Hospice is a palliative care program for patients who want to live out their end outside of a hospital

Hospice is typically recommended by physicians and requested by patients only when it is clear that death is near and inevitable.

Hospice Patients

Age of hospice patients and average death after time enrolled in hospice care

Services Provided

Percent of how many hospice care facilities provide the service

Skilled nursing

Mental health or counseling

From 1997 to 2006, the number of hospice users increased from 495,000 to 1.3 million.

This means that there was a 126% increase in users just over 10 years.

15.6% of patients die after seven days enrolled in hospice and 14.9% of patients live longer than 6 months. The remaining percent of patients lie in between these extremes. THe median is death after 36 days.

Bell curve of average time until death after a patient is enrolled in hospice

Most patients in hospice are over 65 years old, with only 4.8% of patients being under 65. Of the 95.2% of patients that are over 65, 18% are 65-74 years old, 30.2% are 75-84 years old, and 47% are 85 and older.

The percent distribution of a hospice patient's age

In 2020...

A total of 1,534,600 were enrolled in hospice.