Yes, You Can Interview More Than One

Can a family really call more than one hospice?

Yes, without restriction. A hospice election is a signed choice the patient or their decision-maker makes, not an assignment handed down by a hospital or physician. Calling two or three agencies, asking each the same set of questions, and picking based on the answers is a normal, permitted way to make this decision, and it is no different in principle from comparing any other Medicare-certified provider on public quality data 1Ref 1Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2024).Find Healthcare Providers: Compare Care Near You (Hospice).That consumers can publicly compare Medicare-certified hospices on quality measures and CAHPS family-experience scores..

The confusion usually starts at the hospital bedside, where a discharge planner offers a short list and a sense of urgency. That list is real and often useful, but choosing your own hospice from it, or adding an agency the list left off, remains the family's right. If the planner's list feels thin or rushed, it is fair to ask directly whether other Medicare-certified hospices serve the same area.

Why compare at all if a hospital already gave a name?

Because hospices differ in ways that matter at 3 a.m., and a single name from a discharge planner does not disclose them. National research comparing hospice ownership types found that family caregivers of patients at for-profit hospices reported worse experiences across every measured domain — including getting help for symptoms, communication, and timely care — and were less likely to say they would recommend the hospice, compared with families at nonprofit hospices 2Ref 2Anhang Price R, Parast L, Elliott MN, et al. (2023).Association of Hospice Profit Status With Family Caregivers' Reported Care Experiences.Ownership-related differences in family-reported hospice quality across all CAHPS domains..

A separate analysis found that patterns of problematic live discharge — a patient sent off hospice while still declining, then rehospitalized — were substantially more common at for-profit agencies than not-for-profit ones 3Ref 3Teno JM, Plotzke M, Christian T, Gozalo P (2015).Characteristics of Hospice Programs With Problematic Live Discharges.Variation in problematic live-discharge patterns by hospice ownership, as a signal for agency selection.. And a related cohort study of Medicare beneficiaries discharged alive from hospice found that burdensome transitions afterward — hospitalization, readmission, or dying in a hospital rather than at home — were more likely following for-profit hospice enrollment and shorter stays 4Ref 4Peer-reviewed cohort study (see article) (2024).Hospice Readmission, Hospitalization, and Hospital Death Among Patients Discharged Alive from Hospice.Outcomes after live discharge from hospice, including greater risk with for-profit ownership and short stays..

None of this means a specific for-profit agency is the wrong choice for a specific family; ownership is one signal among several, not a verdict. It does mean that the two minutes it takes to ask a hospice about its ownership structure and its live-discharge pattern is a reasonable use of a hard afternoon.

What should the same question sound like across two hospices?

Ask each hospice the identical question and write down the answer, because the value of comparing is in holding two answers side by side, not in impressions from two different conversations. A short, repeatable set works better than an open-ended one:

• Who answers your after-hours line, and is it staffed by your own clinicians or an answering service?
• When a symptom will not break at home, how fast can you get us continuous or inpatient-level care, and where does that inpatient care actually happen?
• What is your average response time to an urgent home call, and can you tell me that number rather than a description?
• What happens if we decide this isn't working and want to switch to another hospice?

The fuller checklist for that first sit-down conversation — including what to ask about the interdisciplinary team, medication delivery, and family training — is covered in a dedicated piece on questions to ask at a hospice admission visit. Committing to ask the same list twice is what turns a comparison from a feeling into a record.

Where does the public data to check their answers live?

Medicare's Care Compare tool is the official public source for comparing Medicare-certified hospices on quality measures and on CAHPS Hospice family-experience scores — the survey of bereaved caregivers that asks whether the team helped with symptoms, communicated clearly, and was there when needed 1Ref 1Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2024).Find Healthcare Providers: Compare Care Near You (Hospice).That consumers can publicly compare Medicare-certified hospices on quality measures and CAHPS family-experience scores.. It will not hand over a single ranked winner, and it should not be read that way; it is a record to check an agency's own claims against, not a leaderboard.

Pulling up two or three agencies on Care Compare before the interview calls, and again after, turns a set of sales pitches into a comparison with a paper trail. If a hospice's answer to "how fast do you respond after hours" does not match what its public experience scores suggest, that gap itself is worth a follow-up question.

Does the hospital or the doctor actually get to pick?

No. A referral is a recommendation, not a binding assignment, and the question of who actually picks the hospice has a firm answer: the patient or their surrogate does. A family that feels steered toward one name off a discharge planner's list, or told they must use the hospice their doctor suggested, is hearing a convenience default, not a rule — and is entitled to ask for the full list of Medicare-certified hospices serving the area, not just the one or two an institution works with most often.

That right extends past the first choice. If the hospice selected during a hospital stay is not working out once care is underway — a home visit that never comes, a phone call unreturned overnight — switching hospices is a real option, and it is covered in more depth elsewhere in this library, including how continuity of care and records transfer when a family moves between agencies.

What does interviewing actually accomplish, in practical terms?

It surfaces the one or two operational facts that matter most in a crisis and that a brochure never states plainly: who actually answers the phone at 2 a.m., and how quickly a bad night converts into a nurse in the room. Every Medicare-certified hospice must be able to deliver continuous home care or general inpatient care when symptoms cannot be managed at home 5Ref 5Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2024).Medicare-Certified 4 Levels of Hospice Care.The requirement that certified hospices be able to deliver continuous home care or general inpatient care for uncontrolled symptoms. — the question worth asking is not whether an agency offers this level of care on paper, but how it has performed the last time a family needed it that night.

An agency that answers with a specific process — who is called, how fast someone comes, where the inpatient bed is located — is telling a family something concrete. An agency that answers only in reassurance is not lying, but it is not helping the comparison either. The point of asking more than one hospice the same question is exactly to notice that difference before enrollment, not after.