April 3 Round-up: Hospice Care
- Growth House's Les Morgan recently interviewed medical journalist Larry Beresford about the Medicare benefit's "hospice cap". They discussed what the payment cap is, whether it is or could effect patient care, and how hospices handle the cap. You can listen here.
- A presentation at last week's American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine discussed the lack of hospice policies that covering the deactivation of implantable cardiac defibrillators (ICDs). Not having such a policy in place could allow patients to unwanted shocks at the end of life. Researcher Nathan Goldstein, M.D. of Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York reported that almost 60% of the 900 hospices surveyed had patients who were shocked after admission. Only 10.9% of the hospices had policies for deactivation of the ICD devices.
- This article from the Houston Chronicle describes how Texans are using hospice care. Reporter Cindy George states that more than 100 doctors in the state have been recently board-certified in hospice and palliative medicine during the first exam held for that sub-specialty.
- Massachusett's Patriot Ledger published an article that describes the writer Sue Scheible's experience with hospice when her father died.
- CureToday's Spring 2009 edition includes an article that expresses the concept of a 'good death'. Elizabeth Paulk, MD, director of the Palliative Care Clinic at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, and Eugene Perlov, MD, a hospice physician with Visiting Nurse Service of New York, describe their experiences with dying patients. In a related article called "The Final Journey ", photographer Beatriz Terrazas and editor-at-large Kathy LaTour spend six months documenting the Abernathy family's experiences, as Judy Abernathy faces the end of her life.
