A live hospice discharge can be defined as when a patient is disenrolled in hospice care prior to death. This can occur for many reasons, but most often due to a change in goals of care, an improvement in the patient’s prognosis, or an acute medical situation that cannot be adequately addressed under hospice care. A live hospice discharge is a major care transition in which patients may lose key hospice services upon which they have depended. Emergency room (ER) visits and hospitalizations are common after live hospice discharges and often result in patients being cared for by clinicians who are unfamiliar with their hospice history. This Fast Fact is written for clinicians seeing these patients in the hospital or outpatient setting.
Link: Fast Facts #521 (10/2025)
