NAHC-NHPCO Alliance Responds to John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” Segment on Hospice
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AUGUST 19, 2024
(Alexandria, VA and Washington, DC) –The leading national organization for hospice and other providers delivering healthcare predominantly in homes, the NAHC-NHPCO Alliance, responded to a segment about hospice that first aired on the HBO and Max current events satire show, “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” on Sunday, August 18. While the show made some good points about the invaluable work done by hospice workers to care for patients at the end of their lives, we believe the segment missed an opportunity to educate patients and their families on the value of hospice and how to find the right hospice provider to meet their needs. It also overlooked the central role played by the hospice community to ensure proper care is delivered and bad actors are driven out of the Medicare hospice program.
The number of Americans choosing hospice for end-of-life care has grown significantly over the last 25 years and the hospice benefit now serves approximately 1.72 million Medicare beneficiaries annually. The growth of the hospice benefit is the result of millions of families who have benefited enormously from the comprehensive, team-based, and patient-oriented care provided by hospice. There are several thousand dedicated, mission-driven, patient centered hospices that provide essential and comprehensive, high-quality services every day across the country. They stand in partnership with Medicare to ensure that patients get the care they need in a manner fully compliant with Medicare requirements.
Unfortunately, just as fraud exists in all segments of our healthcare system, there is fraud that targets the Medicare hospice benefit and harms patients. The issue has received more attention in recent years based both on media coverage and on the advocacy efforts of the hospice community, which universally wants to see the end to fraud. For five years, we have been working closely with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and Congress to develop and effectively implement regulations that root out fraud, protect patients, and ensure the ongoing value and viability of the Medicare hospice benefit. After years of work by NAHC and NHPCO, two legacy organizations coming together to form a new national organization, in cooperation with lawmakers, Congress passed the HOSPICE Act in December of 2020 to address the concerns raised by the “Last Week Tonight” segment. Importantly, virtually all the examples of questionable practices included in the segment were from the 2010s, prior to passage of the HOSPICE Act.
In January of 2023, even as the provisions of the HOSPICE Act were beginning to be implemented, the predecessors to the NAHC-NHPCO Alliance – National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC) and the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) – as well as two other national organizations, joined together to make 34 recommendations to Congress and CMS for additional steps that could be taken to protect patients, families, and the Hospice Benefit. While there is still work to do, we are pleased that today half those recommendations have been enacted.
Every American who qualifies for hospice and wants the service should be able to access quality care.
As Last Week Tonight mentioned, word of mouth in choosing a hospice can be very helpful, as can Medicare’s quality rating system. It’s also important to learn what services the hospice offers, and how those align to the patient’s goals and values. The Alliance recommends having conversations with potential providers to ask questions. Valuable resources for selecting a hospice are available from nahc.org, nhpco.org, and CaringInfo.org.
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About the NAHC-NHPCO Alliance
The NAHC-NHPCO Alliance brings together the National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC) and the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO), two organizations with more than 90 years of combined experience serving providers of quality care in the home to form one new association. This historic alliance creates a national organization representing providers of home care, home health, hospice, and palliative care, forming the most powerful voice and resource the care-at-home community has seen. The integration process underway is expected to continue through the beginning of 2025. While leadership explores a permanent name, the new organization is operating under the interim name the NAHC-NHPCO Alliance. Find the latest on the NAHC and NHPCO websites.
Press Contacts
Elyssa Katz, NHPCO Marketing and Communications Manager
ekatz@nhpco.org | 571-281-0220
Thomas Threlkeld, NAHC Director of Communications
tom@nahc.org | 202-547-7424