Avera@Home Pipestone

What this costs you

If the patient has Medicare Part A and a doctor certifies a life expectancy of six months or less, the Medicare Hospice Benefit pays this provider directly. The family pays nothing for hospice visits, nursing, medicines related to the terminal illness, or equipment. No hospice may charge you for those and none may ask for a deposit. Medicare paid this provider an average of $8,256 per patient over the measurement period. That is what the federal government spent, not what a family pays, we publish it because it is the number the provider is paid on.

• Family caregiver experience

  26.25 / 30

  What bereaved family caregivers said about the hospice afterwards, in the CMS-run CAHPS Hospice Survey.

  • 90% of families would definitely recommend it (national median 86%)

• Presence at the end

  20 / 25

  Whether a nurse or social worker was actually there in the final days, which is the single thing families remember.

  • 77% of patients had a nurse or social worker visit in their last three days (national median 61%)

• Nursing presence

  13 / 20

  How much registered-nurse time patients get, and how often visits lapse for days at a time.

• Discharge integrity

  9.75 / 15

  How often patients are signed off hospice alive, the pattern that shows up when a provider enrols people who were never dying, or drops people who become expensive.

• Care process

  7.5 / 10

  Whether the basics were done at admission: pain screened, breathlessness treated, treatment preferences and beliefs asked about.

  • 98.6% of admissions got the full set of screenings (national median 96.5%)

Was anyone there at the end?

Hospice is judged on the last few days more than anything else. These are this provider's numbers against the national average.

What bereaved families said

CMS has not published survey results for this hospice. It only reports them once enough family caregivers have completed the questionnaire, so smaller providers often have none. That is a gap in the data, not a mark against the provider, ask them directly whether they run their own bereavement survey and what it showed.

Questions families ask about Avera@Home Pipestone

Does Avera@Home Pipestone cost anything?

No. If the patient has Medicare Part A and a doctor certifies a life expectancy of six months or less, the Medicare Hospice Benefit pays Avera@Home Pipestone directly for visits, nursing, equipment and medicines related to the terminal illness. The family is not billed for those and no hospice may ask for a deposit.

How often does Avera@Home Pipestone visit patients in their final days?

CMS records that 77% of this hospice's patients were visited by a registered nurse or social worker in the last three days of life, against a national average of 56%.

What do families say about Avera@Home Pipestone?

In the CMS-run survey of bereaved family caregivers, results were published and 90% of families said they would definitely recommend it. The survey is sent by CMS, not by the hospice, and the hospice cannot choose who is asked.

How is Avera@Home Pipestone graded?

ElderGrade grades it B, above average, scoring 77 out of 100 on the federal hospice record: what bereaved families reported, visits in the last days of life, nurse time per home care day, live-discharge patterns and admission screenings. We take no payment from hospices.

Where does Avera@Home Pipestone provide care?

Most of this hospice's care is delivered in their own home, 70% of its patients. Hospice is a service rather than a place, so the team travels to wherever the patient is living.