Hospice Utilization - Patient Demographics

Inpatient visits included in the counts consist of individuals aged 18 or over with a discharge disposition leading to home or facility hospice care. The total counts per each individual year can be viewed based on different patient characteristics, including patient age groups, individual counties of residence, primary payer type, diagnosis category, and patient sex/race/ethnicity.

The disease categories include circulatory conditions, diabetes, malignant/benign neoplasms, malnutrition, neurodegenerative disease, renal failure or other kidney diagnoses, respiratory conditions and circulatory conditions. The categories represent common groupings of diagnoses seen in other studies related to hospice care and were created by grouping together relevant medical MSDRG codes in the HCAI inpatient data.