Hospice & palliative care

Choosing a Hospice in the Chicago, IL Area

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Illinois licenses hospices under two categories, comprehensive and volunteer, through its state health department, while a separate agency handles Medicaid payment. Because the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin metro area stretches into Indiana and Wisconsin, a hospice serving a Chicago-area family might actually be licensed, inspected, and disciplined by a neighboring state rather than Illinois.

Last updated: July 2026History

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Care Compare Is the First Stop, Not the Last

Medicare's Care Compare website lets anyone search Medicare-certified hospices by ZIP code across the entire Chicago metro and see the same quality measures CMS collects nationwide, including family-experience survey results and claims-based utilization data 1. It costs nothing, needs no login, and works the same way whether the ZIP code searched sits in Cook County or across the state line in Indiana or Wisconsin.

Care Compare's data comes from the Hospice Quality Reporting Program (HQRP), which requires every Medicare-certified hospice nationwide to submit standardized data or accept a reduced payment rate 2. HQRP includes the CAHPS Hospice family-experience survey and the newer HOPE assessment, a clinical data-collection tool CMS phased in to track how patients are doing during a stay. None of this tells a family which hospice fits a particular patient. It tells them what's actually on the public record before a single conversation happens. In a metro as large as Chicago's, that record often runs to dozens of Medicare-certified hospices, which makes a first pass through Care Compare's filters a more efficient starting point than working from a hospital's handout or a general web search.

Illinois Licenses Two Different Kinds of Hospice Program

Illinois law recognizes two distinct categories of hospice license: a comprehensive hospice program, which provides the full range of services a hospice patient might need directly or through contracted providers, and a volunteer hospice program, a smaller model built around trained volunteers supporting a patient's existing care team rather than delivering clinical services itself. The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) licenses and inspects both types under the state's Hospice Program Licensing Act.

Knowing which category a hospice is licensed under matters before comparing it to others. A volunteer hospice program isn't a lesser version of a comprehensive one; it's a different service model, built for a different role in a patient's care, and the two aren't really substitutes for each other. Checking a hospice's license type on IDPH's public records, alongside its Care Compare listing, clarifies what kind of support is actually on offer before assuming it matches a family's needs.

Inside the CAHPS Hospice Survey

CMS mails the CAHPS Hospice Survey to the primary caregiver of a patient who died under hospice care, usually a few months later, asking about communication, help with pain and other symptoms, timeliness of care, caregiver training, and whether they would recommend the hospice to others 3. It reflects one family's lived experience after the fact, not a snapshot taken during the stay itself.

Because each hospice's published score reflects a limited number of survey respondents over a set period, a single domain shouldn't carry the whole judgment. A hospice that scores well on symptom management but weaker on communication is describing something specific worth asking about directly during an intake conversation, rather than a single number that settles the comparison.

Chicago's Hospice Market Extends Into Indiana and Wisconsin

The Chicago metro area, as the federal government defines it, isn't contained within Illinois: the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin metropolitan statistical area includes Lake, Porter, Jasper, and Newton counties in Indiana and Kenosha County in Wisconsin, alongside Cook, DuPage, Will, and the other Illinois counties most people picture as Chicagoland. A hospice serving a family on the Indiana or Wisconsin side of that line is licensed and inspected by that state's own health department, not IDPH.

That cross-border reality means the right public record to check depends on where a hospice itself is licensed, not where a family happens to live within the broader metro. A hospice a few miles across the state line may look local on a map while answering to an entirely different regulator, with its own separate complaint process and inspection history. Care Compare itself doesn't flag this distinction; it lists every Medicare-certified hospice in the search radius regardless of state, so confirming a specific hospice's licensing state is a step a family has to take on its own.

What Live Discharge and For-Profit Status Predict

Patients are sometimes discharged alive from hospice because their condition stabilized and they no longer meet the terminal prognosis the benefit requires, which isn't inherently concerning. Researchers have still identified a pattern worth knowing: patients discharged alive are more likely to be hospitalized, readmitted, or die in a hospital shortly afterward, and this kind of burdensome transition is more common at for-profit hospices and after unusually short stays 4.

A separate national analysis of CAHPS Hospice results found family caregivers reported worse experiences across every measured domain at for-profit hospices compared with nonprofit ones, and were less likely to recommend them 5. Ownership status doesn't determine any single hospice's quality — plenty of individual programs of either kind perform well — but it's a pattern worth weighing alongside a hospice's own CAHPS and live-discharge record.

Illinois Splits Hospice Oversight and Hospice Payment Across Two State Agencies

Illinois divides hospice regulation and hospice financing between two separate state agencies. IDPH licenses hospice programs, conducts survey inspections, and holds complaint records. The Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services (HFS) is the state's Medicaid agency, responsible for enrolling hospices as Medicaid providers and administering payment, including for the facility-based levels of care CMS defines nationally: routine home care, continuous home care during a brief crisis, general inpatient care, and inpatient respite care for a caregiver's break 6.

For a Chicago-area family, that split means a licensing or quality concern goes to IDPH, while a billing or Medicaid-eligibility question goes to HFS. Neither agency substitutes for the other, and neither replaces the federal Care Compare and CAHPS data that already covers Medicare-certified hospices statewide, regardless of which side of a state or agency line a family happens to be dealing with. Keeping the two straight matters most at the moment a concern actually comes up, since routing a licensing complaint to the Medicaid agency, or a payment dispute to the health department, just adds delay to an already difficult conversation.

Common questions

The comprehensive and volunteer hospice categories reflect two different service models: a comprehensive program delivers or arranges the full range of hospice services directly, while a volunteer program supports an existing care team with trained volunteers rather than providing clinical care itself. Checking which type a hospice is licensed as, through Illinois' public health department, clarifies what kind of support it's actually built to provide.

Yes. Care Compare covers every Medicare-certified hospice nationwide, regardless of state, so a hospice on the Indiana or Wisconsin side of the Chicago metro appears the same way an Illinois one does. What differs is which state agency licenses and inspects it, since that hospice answers to Indiana's or Wisconsin's health department rather than Illinois'.

A billing or Medicaid-enrollment question in Illinois goes to the Department of Healthcare and Family Services, the state's Medicaid agency. A licensing, inspection, or quality concern goes to the Illinois Department of Public Health, which regulates hospices directly. The two agencies handle different parts of the same hospice, so the right one depends on what the concern is actually about.

Routine home care is the everyday level most hospice patients receive, wherever they live. General inpatient care is short-term and facility-based, used when a patient's symptoms need more intensive management than a home setting can provide. Continuous home care covers a brief home-based crisis, and inpatient respite care gives a family caregiver a short, planned break.

No single hospice's quality is decided by its tax status. National data shows for-profit hospices score lower on average across CAHPS domains and show more burdensome live discharges, but that describes an industry-wide pattern, not a guarantee about one program. A specific hospice's own Care Compare and CAHPS record is the more reliable check.

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When a Concern Needs to Go Beyond the Hospice Team

  • —the hospice's on-call clinical line goes unanswered during an active symptom crisis
  • —worsening pain, breathlessness, or agitation that isn't addressed within the promised response time
  • —no clinician contact for several days after a family reports a real change in condition

If a hospice patient is in acute distress and the hospice's 24-hour clinical line cannot be reached, call 911 and tell the dispatcher the patient is enrolled in hospice care.

This article explains how to read public hospice-quality data for the Chicago area; it does not replace guidance from a hospice's own clinical team or a treating physician.

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References

  1. 1.Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2024). Find Healthcare Providers: Compare Care Near You (Hospice). Medicare.gov / Care Compare (CMS). link ✓Supports that Chicago-area families can search and compare Medicare-certified hospices by ZIP code on publicly reported quality and CAHPS measures.
  2. 2.Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2024). Hospice Quality Reporting Program. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). link ✓Supports the existence and structure of the Hospice Quality Reporting Program, including CAHPS Hospice and the HOPE assessment, as the data source behind Care Compare.
  3. 3.Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2024). CAHPS Hospice Survey. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). link ✓Supports what the CAHPS Hospice Survey is, who it samples, and which domains it measures.
  4. 4.Peer-reviewed cohort study (see article) (2024). Hospice Readmission, Hospitalization, and Hospital Death Among Patients Discharged Alive from Hospice. JAMA Network Open (PMC11099680). PMID 38753329 ✓Supports that patients discharged alive from hospice face higher rates of hospitalization, readmission, or hospital death, and that this is more common at for-profit hospices and after short stays.
  5. 5.Anhang Price R, Parast L, Elliott MN, et al. (2023). Association of Hospice Profit Status With Family Caregivers' Reported Care Experiences. JAMA Internal Medicine. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2022.7076 ✓Supports that family caregivers report worse experiences across CAHPS domains at for-profit hospices compared with nonprofit hospices.
  6. 6.Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2024). Medicare-Certified 4 Levels of Hospice Care. Medicare.gov / Care Compare (CMS). link ✓Supports the definitions of the four Medicare hospice levels of care.

6 sources, numbered by first appearance. General health information, not medical advice. AI-assisted editorial content — every citation independently verified. Editorial policy

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