The Texas Non Profit Hospice Alliance (TNPHA) and its members are united in the mission to preserve, protect and enhance the community based, non-profit model of hospice. In the 1980s and 1990s nonprofits provided nearly all hospice care in the United States, but that is no longer the case. Today there are more than 4600 hospices operating in the US and approximately 70% of them are for-profit corporations.
Although both non-profit and for-profit hospices care for patients and families at the end of life, for-profit corporations are in business to turn a profit and pay dividends to their stockholders, while non-profits will put their resources back into services that benefit their patients. Patients, not profits, are at the heart of the work we do.
A recent report by the National Partnership for Hospice Innovation found that
- Nonprofit hospices provided patients with 10% more nursing visits, 35% more social worker visits, and twice as many therapy visits per day than their for-profit counterparts.
- Patients of nonprofit hospice received nearly three times as many physician or nurse practitioner visits than for-profit hospices.
- For-profit hospices spent 300% more on advertising than its nonprofit counterparts.
- Nonprofit hospices spent more per day for direct patient care than for-profits.
- The live discharge rate for for-profit hospices (patients discharged from hospice before dying) was almost twice as high as that of non-profits hospices. (A high live discharge rate may indicate that patients are pushed out when their care becomes expensive or that they are dissatisfied with their care.)
- Nonprofits spent more on services such as bereavement services, volunteer programs and palliative care programs.
Our non-profit hospices invest in clinical education to enhance care, offer additional therapeutic treatments and grief support, and believe that receiving quality end-of-life care should never be predicated on an individual’s ability to pay.
Not all hospice care is the same, and you have a right to be informed and choose the very best care for your loved ones.
