 |
|
Determining Hospice Benefit for Patients With Dementia—Reply
|
|
| Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings. |
|
|
|
In Reply: In response to Dr Cherney, an estimated life expectancy of less than 6 months is the main eligibility criterion for hospice. In 1996, the National Hospice Organization (now known as the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization) developed guidelines to estimate the prognosis for noncancer diagnoses for the purposes of determining hospice eligibility.1 In these guidelines, the FAST scale2 was included as a component of the eligibility criteria for patients with a primary diagnosis of dementia. Individual hospice providers may interpret these guidelines differently. However, the original National Hospice Organization guidelines,1 most recent Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services coverage guidelines,3 current interpretation by major hospice providers,4-5 and a recent review article6 indicate that for patients with dementia to qualify for hospice they must be at or beyond FAST stage 7 and be unable to ambulate independently. This effectively makes the cut-off stage 7c on the FAST scale.2
. . . [Full Text of this Article]
Susan L. Mitchell, MD, MPH
smitchell@hrca.harvard.edu
Hebrew SeniorLife
Boston, Massachusetts
 CiteULike  Connotea  Del.icio.us  Digg  Reddit  Technorati  Twitter
What's this?
RELATED ARTICLE
A 93-Year-Old Man With Advanced Dementia and Eating Problems
Susan L. Mitchell
JAMA. 2007;298(21):2527-2536.
ABSTRACT
| FULL TEXT
RELATED LETTER
Determining Hospice Benefit for Patients With Dementia
Clare L. Cherney
JAMA. 2008;299(15):1774.
EXTRACT
| FULL TEXT
|
