Questions to Ask When Choosing a Hospice

What should you ask when choosing a hospice?

Standing in front of a hospice with no idea what to ask is a normal place to be. You are choosing for someone you love, and you are afraid of choosing wrong. No one teaches this. The fix is simple: ask every hospice the same short list, then compare their answers side by side.

The questions below cover what matters most when the hard nights come. How openly a hospice answers is itself a signal. For the wider how-to, see how to choose a hospice, or start with the basics of hospice care.

Questions about staffing and response

This is the heart of it — who shows up when things get hard:

• Who answers the phone at night and on weekends? Is it your own nurse or an answering service?
• How fast can a nurse come to the home in a crisis?
• Do you provide continuous care — hours of round-the-clock nursing at home during a bad patch 50Ref 50Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2026).Medicare Benefit Policy Manual, Chapter 9 — Coverage of Hospice Services Under Hospital Insurance.Official benefit policy detail: benefit periods and recertification, covered services including respite and continuous home care, and bereavement services for the family for up to 13 months after death.?
• How many patients does each nurse carry?

Vague answers about nights and weekends are a real warning sign. To understand normal visit levels, see how many visits a week hospice provides.

Questions about care and setting

Ask what happens when home is not enough, and who leads the care:

• Do you have your own inpatient beds for symptoms that cannot be managed at home?
• Can we keep our own doctor working with your team?
• What therapies and equipment do you provide?
• How do you handle a symptom crisis at 2 a.m.?
• Do you have experience with this specific illness — for example, dementia or heart failure?

Questions about money and grief support

Two areas families forget to ask about, then get surprised by:

• What exactly will Medicare cover, and will we owe anything?
• What is not covered — for example, room and board at a facility?
• What grief support do you offer the family, and for how long? (Hospice includes up to 13 months of bereavement help 6Ref 6CaringInfo (National Alliance for Care at Home / NHPCO) (2026).What is Hospice Care?.Consumer explanation that hospice is a service (not a place), mostly delivered at home, includes the interdisciplinary team and bereavement support up to 13 months, and that choosing hospice is an active decision, not giving up.50Ref 50Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2026).Medicare Benefit Policy Manual, Chapter 9 — Coverage of Hospice Services Under Hospital Insurance.Official benefit policy detail: benefit periods and recertification, covered services including respite and continuous home care, and bereavement services for the family for up to 13 months after death..)
• Do you have chaplains, social workers, and volunteers?

One fact that surprises families: Medicare hospice does not pay room and board anywhere 1Ref 1Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2026).Hospice Care Coverage.Medicare hospice benefit mechanics: two-physician certification of a 6-month prognosis, election of comfort-focused care, covered services (nursing, drugs for symptom management, aide, respite), the up-to-$5 outpatient drug copay and 5% respite coinsurance, and that room and board is not covered.. A good hospice answers money questions plainly and puts things in writing.

Red flags in the answers

Some answers should give you pause:

• Vague or shifting answers about who covers nights and weekends
• Pressure to enroll fast, or promises that sound too good
• A high live-discharge rate, which can signal enrolling people who were not eligible 3Ref 3Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) (2025).Hospice Services (Chapter 9), Report to the Congress: Medicare Payment Policy, March 2025.Census-level 2023 hospice statistics: >1.7M Medicare beneficiaries served, $25.7B spending, 51.7% of decedents used hospice, median stay 18 days vs mean 96.2 days, >25% enroll in the last week of life, 18.5% live-discharge rate, ~80% of hospices for-profit, and the ~3.9 visits/week routine-home-care reality.
• Reluctance to put coverage or costs in writing

Reporting has documented for-profit programs that enrolled people who were not dying and cut corners 23Ref 23Ava Kofman (ProPublica / The New Yorker) (2022).Endgame: How the Visionary Hospice Movement Became a For-Profit Hustle.Investigative evidence of for-profit hospice fraud — enrollment quotas, recruiting non-dying patients, and regulatory failure — supporting 'choosing a hospice matters' and trust-building transparency content.. Profit status is one clue among many — see whether for-profit vs nonprofit matters. Most hospices are honest; these questions simply help you find the good ones.

How age, diagnosis, and cost shape your questions

Tailor the list to the person. For dementia, ask how the team handles a long, slow course and confusion at night. For cancer, ask about strong pain control and quick help in the last days, when death is close. If the person lives alone or far out, press hard on night coverage and travel time.

Cost rarely separates hospices, since Medicare pays them under the same benefit 1Ref 1Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2026).Hospice Care Coverage.Medicare hospice benefit mechanics: two-physician certification of a 6-month prognosis, election of comfort-focused care, covered services (nursing, drugs for symptom management, aide, respite), the up-to-$5 outpatient drug copay and 5% respite coinsurance, and that room and board is not covered.. So spend your questions on care and staffing, not price.

Bring this list to each hospice

Before you call anyone, look each hospice up on Medicare's Care Compare site (medicare.gov/care-compare). It shows family ratings and how each hospice performs, free.

Ask every program these, and write down the answers. Start with the one that worries you most.

1. Who answers at night and weekends, and who can come out? 2. How fast do you respond to an urgent call? 3. Do you have inpatient beds and continuous care? 4. Can we keep our own doctor? 5. What will Medicare cover, and what will we owe? 6. What grief support do you offer, and for how long?