Report shows 42 percent of U.S. deaths occur under hospice care

The National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization recently released its 2011 Facts and Figures: Hospice Care in America report. The report revealed that almost 42 percent of all deaths in the U.S. occurred under hospice care in 2010; an estimated 1.58 million patients received hospice services in 2010; the median time people spent in hospice care before dying was about 20 days; 66 percent of hospice patients died in their homes; and hospice patients died mostly of cancer (35.6 percent), followed by heart disease (14.3 percent). The first hospice program in the United States opened in 1974, and there are now more than 5,000 programs nationwide. The Medicare hospice benefit, enacted by Congress in 1982, is the major source of funding for hospice care.