California Nursing Home Abuse Lawyer Blog
Have you been urged to place your elderly parent in hospice care despite the fact that he or she is not terminally ill? Hospice care is intended for patients who are terminally ill and for whom there is no cure. So why are healthy older adults ending up in hospice? A recent article in the Washington Post revealed that this phenomenon might be a larger problem than we’d like to think. Indeed, over the 2000s, the newspaper reported that the “number of ‘hospice survivors’ in the United States has risen dramatically.” What’s going on? According to the article, “hospice companies earn more by recruiting patients who aren’t actually dying,” since “healthier patients are more profitable because they require fewer visits and stay enrolled longer.”
If you have been pressured to move a parent into hospice care, your elderly loved one might not receive the kind of treatment she or he needs. For-profit companies shouldn’t be allowed to take advantage of older adults. Indeed, we might think of these actions as another form of elder abuse. It’s important to speak to an experienced elder law attorney about your options.
Hospice Discharge Statistics
This news is only the latest in many reports concerning elderly dementia patients and the varied problems of antipsychotic drugs. Indeed, the California Department of Public Health and the Department of Health Care Services have been working to reduce the “off-label” use of 
Those of us who prosecute civil cases on behalf of these victims – or, sadly, their heirs – have been experiencing this for years. We all have had cases where the DPH letter arrives saying that the complaint “could not be substantiated” despite overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing. Or the investigator finds some small (and usually irrelevant) “deficiency” when ask to investigate a clearly suspicious death. Or telling the victim’s families to be patient, but knowing full well that the likely hood of a citation against the home, even in the strong cases, was highly unlikely.
