Title: Hospice care in the United States
Content:  are overly optimistic in their assessment of prognosis, presuming treatment will be more effective than it is. As a result, the majority of patients are referred to hospice in the very end-stages of their diseases, or choose that time to seek hospice care. The average length of stay in hospice before a patient dies was 26 days in 1994 and 19 days in 1998. Although the length of average stays has since increased, the term of care continues to be underused. In 2004 the average stay was 57 days and the median length was 22 days. 33% of hospice patients admitted in 2004 died within seven days of admission. Such late admission is inconsistent with the process of hospice, which is to alleviate patient distress 
Title: Thanatology
Content:  die within around 12 months or less. A decision to use hospice care means the dying individual will ideally spend more quality time with the people they love and have time to look back on life during this peaceful, meaningful period. Another common myth is that hospice care means giving up hope. Hospice involves coping with death and part of that means acknowledging that some diseases, illnesses and states of being in their advanced stages cannot be cured. The idea of hope varies from person to person and, in hospice care, patients and their loved ones will often seek any form of hope that they can. However, in places where there is little or no publicly funded provision, various private insurance plans such as Medicare, Medicaid, and HMO will take care of the costs of hospice care, reducing direct expense for the individual's family.
Title: Terminal illness
Content:  While hospitals focus on treating the disease, hospices focus on improving patient quality-of-life until death. A common misconception is that hospice care hastens death because patients "give up" fighting the disease. However, patients in hospice care often live the same length of time as patients in the hospital. A study of 3850 liver cancer patients found that patients who received hospice care, and those who did not, survived for the same amount of time. In fact, a study of 3399 adult lung cancer patients showed that patients who received hospice care actually survived longer than those who did not. Additionally, in both of these studies, patients receiving hospice care had significantly lower healthcare expenditures. Hospice care allows patients to spend more time with family and friends. Since patients are in the company of other hospice patients, they have an additional support network and can learn to cope together. Hospice patients are also able to live at peace away from a hospital setting; they may live at home with a hospice provider or at an inpatient hospice facility.
Title: Hospice care in the United States
Content:  General inpatient care is an intensive level of care which may be provided in a nursing home, a specially contracted hospice bed or unit in a hospital, or in a free-standing hospice unit. General inpatient criterion is for patients who are experiencing severe symptoms which require daily interventions from the hospice team to manage. Often, patients on this level of care have begun the "active phase" of dying, when their prognosis is measured in days as opposed to weeks or months. Although there is a limit to how long Medicare will cover this level of care, it is usually provided for brief periods of time, with five to seven days being the average.
Title: Hospice care in the United States
Content:  than thirty days, and many for less than one week, hospice care may be authorized for more than six months given a patient's condition. Care may be provided in a patient's home or in a designated facility, such as a nursing home, hospital unit or freestanding hospice, with level of care and sometimes location based upon frequent evaluation of the patient's needs. The four primary levels of care provided by hospice are routine home care, continuous care, general inpatient, and respite care. Patients undergoing hospice treatment may be discharged for a number of reasons, including improvement of their condition and refusal 
Title: Hospice care in the United States
Content:  Medicare system, a social insurance program in the United States, and other health insurance providers, hospice care is made available in the United States to patients of any age with any terminal prognosis who are medically certified to have less than six months to live. In 2007, hospice treatment was used by 1.4 million people in the United States. More than one-third of dying Americans use the service. Common misperceptions regarding the length of time a patient may receive hospice care and the kinds of illnesses covered may result in hospice being underutilized. Although most hospice patients are in treatment for 
Title: Treatment of cancer
Content:  Hospice is a group that provides care at the home of a person that has an advanced illness with a likely prognosis of less than 6 months. As most treatments for cancer involve significant unpleasant side effects, a patient with little realistic hope of a cure or prolonged life may choose to seek comfort care only, forgoing more radical therapies in exchange for a prolonged period of normal living. This is an especially important aspect of care for those patients whose disease is not a good candidate for other forms of treatment. In these patients, the risks related to the chemotherapy may actually be higher than the chance of responding to the treatment, making further attempts to cure the disease impossible. Of note, patients on hospice can sometimes still get treatments such as radiation therapy if it is being used to treat symptoms, not as an attempt to cure the cancer.
Title: Hospice care in the United States
Content:  In order to qualify for hospice care, a patient must have certification from two physicians that he or she has less than six months to live if his or her disease runs its natural course; usually the patient's primary physician and the Hospice Medical Director will provide this certification. Patients can and do stay on hospice longer than six months, and as long as the hospice team continues to certify with supporting evidence that the patient is terminal, insurance companies will usually continue to pay for hospice care. Many physicians are slow to refer to hospice care, waiting until they are absolutely certain of a terminal prognosis. Some physicians believe that the patient must have a six-month prognosis or less to receive hospice care, while 
Title: Hospice care in the United States
Content: 48.2 percent of Medicare beneficiaries who died in 2017 were enrolled in hospice at the time of death. ; 40.5 percent of patients received care for 14 days or less, while those receiving care for more than 180 days accounted for 14.1 percent. ; At 98.2 percent, Routine Home Care accounts for the vast majority of days of care. ; $18.99 billion was spent on hospice care by Medicare in 2017, representing an increase of 6.3 percent. ; Since 2014, beneficiaries identified as Asian and Hispanic increased by 32 percent and 21 percent respectively. The first hospices are believed to have originated 
Title: Hospice care in the United States
Content:  a period of time, based on time for patients and family members to develop relationships with the hospice team. Some people believe that only individuals suffering from cancer or AIDS can receive hospice care. Hospice in the United States developed around the model of cancer care, with a relatively predictable pattern of deterioration. According to 2002's The Case Against Assisted Suicide: For the Right to End-of-life Care, "60% of hospice patients have cancer." But, patients can be on hospice for numerous other illnesses, such as end-stage heart and lung diseases, stroke, renal failure, Alzheimers, or many other conditions. Any diagnosis that would be an acceptable cause of death on a death certificate is, if expected to be terminal, an acceptable diagnosis for hospice care.

Question: what is the average time in hospice care?
Answer: 57 days.