The 2024 Facts and Figures report is available now! Facts and Figures is an annual report on key data points related to the delivery of hospice care, including information on patient characteristics, location and level of care, Medicare hospice spending, and hospice providers.
The findings in this report reflect patients who received care in Calendar Year (CY) 2022, or Fiscal Year (FY) 2022, provided by hospices certified by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and reimbursed under the Medicare Hospice Benefit.
Select findings from this year’s report include the following:
- 1.72 million Medicare beneficiaries were enrolled in hospice care for one day or more in calendar year (CY) 2022. This is a slight increase from 2021 but approximately equal to 2020.
- Of all Medicare decedents in CY 2022, 49.1% received one day or more of hospice care and were enrolled in hospice at the time of death. This is the first increase in utilization since 2019.
- In CY 2022, Medicare Advantage (MA) continued growing into a larger portion of the Medicare population. A vast majority of MA beneficiaries shift to Traditional Medicare to utilize the Medicare Hospice Benefit. A small sect of beneficiaries who stay with MA for hospice care have value-based insurance design (VBID) plans.
- In CY 2022, 51.6% of White Medicare decedents used the Medicare Hospice Benefit. 38.1% of Asian American Medicare decedents and 37.4% of Black Medicare decedents enrolled in hospice. 38.3% of Hispanic and 37.1% of North American Native Medicare decedents used hospice in 2022. CY 2022 saw an increase in hospice utilizations by all race/ethnicity groups with Hispanic beneficiaries seeing the largest increase. No group has returned to pre-COVID-19 utilization percentages.
- The principal hospice diagnosis is the diagnosis, based on ICD-10 codes, determined to be the most contributory to the patient’s terminal prognosis. Alzheimer's/nervous system disorders/organic psychosis, at 25%, is the top category of diagnosis for hospice beneficiaries and appears multiple times in the top diagnoses by, ICD-10 code. Cancer and circulatory diseases round out the top three diagnoses groups which account for nearly three-fourths of all hospice beneficiary diagnoses.
- Medicare paid hospice providers a total of $23.7 billion dollars for care provided in CY 2022, representing an increase of 2.7% over the previous year. This is slower growth compared to 2019-2021 but similar growth from 2020-2021.
- In the most recently available data, 50.0% of participating providers received four or five stars on the CAHPS® (Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) survey, which represents a 1% increase over the prior reporting period. However, Star Ratings were available for fewer than half of providers (2,046).