When a Health Insurer Also Wants to Be a Hospice Company

Humana has partnered with TPG Capital and Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe to purchase two hospice chains that together would create the industry's largest hospice operator, reports the New York Times . The partners will take over a branch of Kindred Healthcare that offers both home health and hospice care, while in April they announced plans to buy Curo Health Services from Thomas H. Lee Partners. However, a series of government lawsuits charging negligence and malfeasance against certain hospice providers adds controversy to such moves, as companies have been accused of signing up people who are not terminally sick, refusing visits from a nurse, or even denying a needed trip to the hospital. Oregon Health & Science University Professor Joan Teno warns a profit-driven company delivering care tends to focus less on quality and more on profitability. Both of the companies Humana plans to acquire have been entangled in litigation brought by the federal government. Kindred was fined $3 million in 2016 by federal officials and shuttered some facilities after the government said it could not ensure that it was not overbilling Medicare. Meanwhile, Curo paid $12 million in 2017 to settle charges that it paid kickbacks to reward doctors for sending people to its hospices.