Institute of Medicine urges reforms to improve care for dying people [View all]
Source: San Jose Mercury News
An influential national institute has prescribed a powerful cure for America's approach to dying, saying that today's health care system is ill-equipped to provide the comfort and care so cherished in our final days.
The long-awaited report released Wednesday by the Institute of Medicine recommends that regular end-of-life conversations become part of patients' primary care, starting at age 18 and that doctors should be paid for time spent on these discussions -- a controversial initiative eliminated from President Barack Obama's health care law.
The report reflects the growing concern over the dizzying array of high-tech interventions to emerge in recent years that prolong futile suffering, often at great emotional, physical and financial cost. Those interventions were the subject of this newspaper's yearlong series "Cost of Dying." To correct the current, misguided course, Medicare should boost coverage for home health services, not just high-tech hospital care, the report urges. And more doctors must be trained and licensed in end-of-life care, through changes in universities, state medical boards and accrediting agencies, it adds.
"Even though death is very much part of the cycle of life, thinking and talking about one's own death usually remains in the background," said Dr. Philip Pizzo, former dean of Stanford University's School of Medicine and a co-chairman of the report.
Read more: http://www.mercurynews.com/health/ci_26551763/national-institute-medicine-report-recommends-ways-improve-end
Of course this was smeared by Sarah Palin & other rightwingers as "DEATH PANELS." So crazy and out there that Politifact called the "death panel" the 2009 lie of the year.
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