Hospice care is a voluntary program with an approach to caring for terminally ill individuals that stresses palliative care (relief of pain and uncomfortable symptoms), as opposed to curative care.  Hospice provides medical, social, psychological, emotional, and spiritual services through the use of a wide range of professionals and other care-givers with the goal of making the individual as physically and emotionally comfortable as possible.  An important goal of hospice care is to keep the terminally ill patient comfortable in the patient's home or at an in-patient facility until death.

Hospice Core Services
Core services provided by a hospice program on a routine basis.
-  Nursing care
-  Medical social services
-  Counseling (including dietary, spiritual and bereavement counseling); and
-  Physician Services

Hospice Legislation
Conditions for Coverage (CfCs) & Conditions of Participations (CoPs); (Minimum federal health and safety standards for health facilities; 42 CFR Chapter 4, Part 418)

Michigan Administrative Code
Hospice and Hospice Residences (R 325.13101 - 325.13543)

Michigan Public Health Code (P.A. 368 of 1978); Hospices; Part 214; MCL 333.21401...333.21421)
- Definitions, Terminal Illness (Article 5, Part 56A, MCL 333.5653
- Hospice Surveys, Evaluations, Consultations and Complaints; (Article 17, Part 201, MCL 333.20155)
- State Fees for Hospice Residences; (Article 17, Part 201, Section 333.20161(f))

MI Hospice Program Licensure Process

Medicare Eligibility
The following criteria must be met to qualify for hospice care:
- Individuals must be entitled to Part A of Medicare to be eligible to elect hospice care.
- The individual's attending physician and the hospice medical director or physician member of the interdisciplinary group must certify that the individual is terminally ill.
- The individual must have been diagnosed with a terminal illness that has a life limiting prognosis of 6 months or less to live if the illness run its normal course.

Contact Information
Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs
Bureau of Health Systems
Division of Licensing & Certification, Hospice Program
P. O. Box 30664
Lansing, MI 48909
Telephone: (517) 241-3830
FAX: (517) 241-3354

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