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6 min read 6 stepsMay 8, 2026Verified May 2026

How to Find a Medicare-Certified Hospice Near You

Step-by-step guide to using the official Medicare Hospice Compare tool, reading quality ratings, and picking a trustworthy agency.

At a Glance

Open the Medicare Care Compare Website

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Open a browser on your phone, tablet, or computer and go to medicare.gov/care-compare. The page is run by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that oversees hospice. Look for a search box near the top of the page. Pick the option labeled Hospice care from the drop-down menu. Type your zip code or city in the location field. Click the blue Search button. The page will load a list of hospice agencies that serve your area along with the distance from your zip code.

Quick Tip

If a parent lives in a different state from you, search the parent's zip code, not your own. Hospice agencies are tied to where the patient lives.

Read the Quality Star Ratings

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Each hospice in the list shows a star rating from one to five based on how the agency performed on patient and family surveys. Look closely at the category called Family caregiver experience, which sums up what real families said about how the hospice handled communication, emotional support, and pain management. Three stars is average. Four or five stars means most families felt well cared for. One or two stars is a signal to ask more questions or look elsewhere. Click the agency name to see a detailed page with each measure broken out.

Warning

A hospice with no star rating is usually too new to have been surveyed yet. New does not mean bad. But it does mean you have less information to go on.

Check the Ownership and Inspection History

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On the detail page for each hospice, scroll to the section labeled General information. It will show whether the agency is for-profit or nonprofit, who owns it, when it was first certified by Medicare, and whether it has had any serious inspection findings. Federal inspectors visit every hospice every three years. If the agency has a recent finding of significant deficiency, that detail will appear on the page. A clean record is a good sign. A history of repeat findings is a yellow flag worth discussing with the agency directly.

Quick Tip

Nonprofit hospices spend a larger share of their budget on direct patient care on average, while for-profit hospices may have more flexible hours or 24-hour aide coverage. Both can give excellent care.

Call Two or Three Agencies for a Free Information Visit

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Pick the top two or three hospices that look promising and call each one. Tell the person who answers that you are gathering information for a family member and would like to schedule a no-cost intake visit. Hospices send a nurse or social worker to the home within a day or two to explain services, answer questions, and look at the home setup. This visit does not commit the family to anything. The patient does not have to sign up that day. Many families meet with two agencies before deciding.

Quick Tip

Ask the intake worker how often a nurse visits, how the agency handles middle-of-the-night calls, and whether the hospice has a dedicated facility for short respite stays.

Ask the Five Key Questions Before You Sign

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Bring a list of questions to the intake visit. The five most useful are: How many patients does each nurse care for at the same time? How quickly can a nurse come if my parent has a crisis at 2 a.m.? Will the same aide come each visit or does it change? Are spiritual care and grief support included for the whole family? How long after a death does grief support last? A strong hospice will answer all five without hesitation. If an answer is vague or the staff member changes the subject, take that as a sign to keep looking.

Warning

Never feel pressured to sign hospice paperwork on the same day as the first visit. A reputable hospice will give the family at least a day or two to decide.

Confirm the Doctor and Nursing Home Are Compatible

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If a parent lives in a nursing home or assisted living, ask the hospice whether they already work inside that facility. Most hospices have established relationships with local facilities, which makes the move into hospice care smoother. The patient stays in their familiar room, the nursing home staff continues with daily care, and the hospice team layers on extra visits, supplies, and comfort medicines. Also ask whether the patient's existing primary doctor can stay involved, or whether a hospice physician will take over.

Quick Tip

Patients keep their right to fire one hospice and pick another at any time, with no penalty. If the first choice does not fit, you are not stuck.

You Did It!

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Choosing a hospice agency for a parent, spouse, or close friend feels heavy, but the search itself is straightforward once you know where to look. Medicare keeps a free, public website called Care Compare that lets anyone look up hospice agencies by zip code and read the quality scores those agencies have earned. Every hospice agency that bills Medicare has to be certified by the federal government, and certified agencies are inspected and rated on the care they give. Using this tool stops you from picking a name from a random Google search or a hospital pamphlet without knowing more.

Many families do not know that hospices vary widely. Some are small nonprofits run by churches or community foundations and have been in the same town for 40 years. Others are large for-profit chains owned by national companies. Both kinds can give wonderful care, and both kinds can fall short. Reading the quality data, asking the right questions, and visiting in person where possible help families pick an agency that fits the patient's needs and the family's values.

This guide walks through the Medicare Care Compare website step by step. We cover how to type in your zip code, how to read the star ratings, how to look at the survey results from families who used each hospice in the past, and how to call agencies for an in-home assessment. We also list the questions to ask each agency before signing the paperwork.

The whole research process can be done in an afternoon if a parent has been told hospice is the next step. If the patient is stable and you are planning ahead, give yourself a few days. Read in the morning when your head is clearest. Take notes in a single notebook or document so you can compare agencies side by side. Two or three hospices is usually enough to compare. More than that becomes a blur.

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Official Resources

Medicare.gov MedlinePlus — Health Info AARP Health & Technology

Sources used to create and verify this guide. View all sources →

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