"hospice for everyone"

[walkitout]

A while back, I waxed venomous about a hospital administrator who raised as a specter the idea of "hospice for everyone", which might result from cost control, rationing, or whatever bogey had crawled up their ass the day they were interviewed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/health/01brod.html

Jane Brody's recent column on hospice suggests that hospice for everyone isn't something that people actually experiencing hospice think is all that bad. And the numbers support the idea that the kind of care people receive in hospice helps them live longer -- and much more comfortably and happily -- than expensive, hospital based interventions (or even the other stream of care in nursing homes -- granted, nursing homes have hospice options as well). True, these are not just the sickest in our population: they are clearly and unequivocally dying (altho, honestly, we all are, every day, we just don't like to think about it that way), and hard cases make bad law.

Still. Worth a read.

Comments

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I don't want hospice to be the *only* option after 80 (as my family has a lot of long-lived members, a number of them have had significant surgery and such after age 80), but I don't suppose anyone does -- seems like a classic straw man argument.

straw people

[walkitout]

I guess what bothers me is that whenever people start talking about hospice and end of life care and so forth, there's this collective shudder that seems to take over the conversation, as if living the last few months and years of one's life having great supportive care and thoughtfully chosen levels of medication and other medical services is somehow a horrifying idea.

Hospice isn't even incompatible with surgery, for that matter. What hospice brings to the table is the idea that we are no longer making decisions with the assumption that if we fix everything that is "wrong" with this person, they will live forever.