When end-of-life care is done "the right way,"

this is where "you have an extremely high degree of coordination between the care managers at the plan and the nurses at the hospital and the folks at the hospice. And these are just conversations that don't happen enough....Doctors don't like to have these conversations. And patients don't know who to turn to for answers. And so very often what happens is that if hospice gets elected at all, it happens way too late for it to be meaningful from a quality of life or expenditures standpoint. We've got to get a lot more courageous in this country about having this conversation, much earlier. But then you have the policy problem of hospice in effect being a benefit that has a time limit and a time criteria on it....And that is a big problem when it could be serving as a terrific alternative to nursing home or rehab hospital care."

— John Gorman, executive chairman of Gorman Health Group, told AIS's Health Plan Week.