The Hospice Benefit

One-pager Resource: Who Receives Hospice Care? When a patient is referred to hospice, Medicare regulations require that two physicians, the hospice medical director and the patient’s attending physician or the hospice physician, determine that the patient has a prognosis of six months or less if the illness runs its expected course. Patients must be reassessed for eligibility at regular intervals, but there is no limit on the amount of time a patient can spend under hospice care.