CFP: Ethics and Logistics in the Age of Hospice

Call for Papers. Special Issue of Health Services Insights (A SAGE publication) 

“Ethics and Logistics in the Age of Hospice,”

J.K. Miles, PhD  and Jeri Conboy PhD, MSHCE, LCSW

[email protected] [email protected]

Hospice ethics has focused on direct care, rather than administrative logistics. The Medicare Hospice Benefit was designed and implemented when the way we die differed vastly from how it is in the 21st century. The ethical issues associated with continuing to implement a nearly 40-year-old model of care needs attention. Topics might include 

• Is there a conflict between the fiduciary responsibility to Medicare and the patients and families hospice serves?  

• What are the physician’s duties with informing the patient about the hospice option? Do physicians have a duty to inform patients and families of the hospice option as early as possible? 

• Is there still a stigma surrounding hospice referrals? 

• What are the ethical and logical challenges of hospice home visits during the age COVID-19? 

• Are there ethical problems with aggressive recruiting of hospice patients? 

• Does the Medicare benefit structure make Hospice care particularly prone to certain kinds of fraud and abuse? 

• Because of the opioid crisis, how do Hospice providers mitigate family members and third parties gaining access to opioids?

Submissions should be about 5,000 words. We invite proposals from any discipline or field, but are especially interested in proposals from ethicists, healthcare economists, and administrators.