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Articles Tagged with Hospice abuse

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Medical malpractice is on the rise in hospices. Once a place handled by nuns and caring volunteers, hospice care has become a multi-million dollar business handled by not so caring CEO’s who are often putting profits ahead of patient needs.

Recently the FBI busted Brad Harris the 30 year old owner and CEO of a Texas Hospice for instructing nurses to overdose patients.  The Daily Beast  writes that during the course of the investigation Harris texted one of the nurses “You need to make this patient go bye-bye”. Harris who has no medical education also texted another nurse to increase by four times the patient’s medication. In another conversation Harris said “if only this F*** would die”.

Because hospices are paid by the government through Medicaid and Medicare  they receive a cap amount of $27,820.75  per patient. Therefore a patient who stays alive too long is not profitable for a hospice. The incentive is to have more patients with shorter stays. The FBI said Harris spoke about “finding patients who would die within 24hrs”.

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Lack of comprehensive regulation in the hospice industry has lead to repeated instances of abuse and neglect of patients. More and more patients in hospice care are suffering needlessly because they don’t get routine hydration, nutrition, medical attention and proper prescription medication. In this video, Farron Cousins, a guest host of Ring of Fire Radio, describes how the corporations came into the hospice business turning it into a full for profit venture with an incentive to cut costs and minimize the amount of care to maximize profit.