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Telehospice® (TH) utilizes telemedicine technology to provide care at the end of life. A bistateproject was launched in 1998 to study the use of home-based telemedicine for routinehospice care. Videophones were deployed for telenursing visits and evaluations by socialworkers. In order to determine what proportion of home hospice visits could be performedusing currently available telemedicine technology, we reviewed clinical records retrospectivelyfor hospice nurse home visits. Clinical notes documenting home nursing visits wereobtained from two large hospices, one based in Kansas, and the other in Michigan. Recordswere randomly selected for patients who received hospice nurse visits during the month ofJanuary 2000. The charts were reviewed for patient demographic information, patient assessments,teaching activities, and interventions. Five hundred ninety-seven nursing notes wereanalyzed using an 85-item coding instrument. After careful review of the records, the codersalso made a subjective observation regarding the suitability of each visit for telemedicine. Aspart of this analysis, we found that 64.5% of home hospice nursing visits could be performedby telemedicine. Using TH, it is possible to reduce the number of in-person visits, therebysignificantly decreasing the cost of providing hospice care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]