It’s one of the most painful decisions an individual or family can make: When to use hospice care.
Hospice is a specialized practice that focuses on comfort, dignity, and quality of life for individuals with a terminal illness whom doctors believe have six months or less to live.
A change in state hospice licensing standards in 2018 has led to a spike in the number of hospices statewide. It’s also led to a significant increase in hospice fraud, one that’s hit home in the Tri-Counties.
Ventura County now has more than 70 hospice care facilities.
"There are six hospices in Ventura County that have a live discharge rate of 100%, which means that in 2025, their claims data (federal payments) showed that everyone that they enrolled in hospice was discharged live from hospice," said Molly Corbett, who oversees Livingston Memorial Visiting Nurse Association and Hospice. It’s the only nonprofit hospice organization in Ventura County.
She added that data shows those people should not have been in hospice care. According to Corbett, some hospices are legally licensed but operating unethically.
"There are hospices that have a California license to operate, and they are Medicare-approved, but they are operating fraudulently. We have an issue of hospices going door-to-door, especially in senior and low-income communities, offering to sign people up, and not disclosing what it means. People are being signed up unbeknownst to them. We've received calls from family members who have decided it's time for them to have their loved one go on hospice, and we discover their loved one has already been on hospice for months."
The issue has legitimate hospice care providers worried.
"Hospice victims are particularly vulnerable for a number of reasons," explained Reiner Roeske with the Ventura County Homecare Association. "They're aging...they're being bamboozled and tricked into being in hospice by marketers, by physicians, by facilities that are profiting."
California, along with the Federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, rolled out new regulations this summer that they hope will help. The federal agency reports that it removed more than 1,000 California hospices from its rolls due to fraud in just the past year.
Corbett offered some tips for people considering hospice care.
"They should be looking for how long (the hospice agency) has been a part of the community. What's their star rating on Care Compare? Are your clinicians local? You don't want clinicians coming from Orange County, San Bernardino County, and all over when you have somebody that's in need."
