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The concepts that underlie hospice were introduced a few centuries ago but, the modern hospice movement began in London in 1967.

In 1982 hospice was added as a Medicare benefit. Today, half of all Medicare decedents enroll in hospice, at a total cost of $20.9 billion to Medicare in 2019.

Hospice has a strong evidence base for improving end-of-life experiences for the recipient and the recipient's family. But there's limited evidence regarding the effects of hospice for people with dementia.

This is a critical knowledge gap given that one in three adults aged 85 and older has dementia.

Krista Harrison from University of California San Francisco joins A Health Podyssey to discuss how well hospice works for people with dementia.

Harrison and coauthors published a paper in the June 2022 issue of Health Affairs assessing the relationship between hospice enrollment and last month of life care quality for Medicare enrollees living with dementia.

They found that hospice-enrolled people living with dementia had higher quality last month of life care than people who are not enrolled in hospice, with quality levels similar to people without dementia.

Order the June 2022 issue of Health Affairs for research on costs, care delivery, COVID-19, and more.

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