ArticleJournal of general internal medicine2022
Variation in Benzodiazepine and Antipsychotic Prescribing Among Hospice Agencies.
Article in Journal of general internal medicine, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Benzodiazepine or Antipsychotic Use and Mortality Risk Among Patients With Dementia in Hospice Care.JAMA network open · 2025Article
- Behavioral symptoms and treatment challenges for patients living with dementia: Hospice clinician and caregiver perspectives.Journal of the American Geriatrics Society · 2025Article
- Factors Associated With Benzodiazepine and Antipsychotic Prescribing in Hospice: A Qualitative Study of Hospice Prescribers.Journal of the American Medical Directors Association · 2023Article
- Hospice agency characteristics associated with benzodiazepine and antipsychotic prescribing.Journal of the American Geriatrics Society · 2023Article
- Functional and clinical needs of older hospice enrollees with coexisting dementia.Journal of the American Geriatrics Society · 2023Article
- State variation in antipsychotic and benzodiazepine prescribing among hospice beneficiaries in the United States.Journal of the American Geriatrics Society · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundBenzodiazepines and antipsychotics are routinely prescribed for symptom management in hospice. There is minimal evidence to guide prescribing in this population, and little is known about how prescribing varies across hospice agencies.
objectiveExamine patient- and hospice agency-level characteristics associated with incident prescribing of benzodiazepines and antipsychotics in hospice.
designRetrospective cohort study of a 20% sample of Medicare beneficiaries newly enrolled in hospice.
participantsMedicare hospice beneficiaries ≥ 65 years old between 2014 and 2016, restricted to those without benzodiazepine (N = 169,688) or antipsychotic (N = 190,441) prescription fills in the 6 months before hospice enrollment. MAIN MEASURES: The primary outcome was incident (i.e., new) prescribing of a benzodiazepine or antipsychotic. A series of multilevel Cox regression models with random intercepts for hospice agency were fit to examine the association of incident benzodiazepine and antipsychotic prescribing with patient and hospice agency characteristics. KEY
resultsA total of 91,728 (54.1%) and 58,175 (30.5%) hospice beneficiaries were newly prescribed an incident benzodiazepine or antipsychotic. The prescribing rate of the hospice agency was the strongest predictor of incident prescribing: Compared to patients in bottom-quartile benzodiazepine-prescribing agencies, those in top-quartile agencies were 10.7 times more likely to be prescribed an incident benzodiazepine (adjusted hazard ratio [AHR] 10.7, 95% CI 10.1-11.3). For incident antipsychotic prescribing, patients in top-quartile agencies were 51.7 times more likely to receive an antipsychotic (AHR 51.7, 95% CI 44.3-60.4) compared to those in the bottom quartile. Results remained consistent accounting for comfort kit prescribing.
conclusionsThe pattern of benzodiazepine or antipsychotic prescribing of a hospice agency strongly predicts whether a hospice enrollee is prescribed these medications, exceeding every other patient-level factor. While the appropriate level of prescribing in hospice is unclear, this variation may reflect a strong local prescribing culture across individual hospice agencies.
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