Tag: Hospice

The Hospice Will See You Now

Dec 31, 2013

By John Schumann, MD

Doctors are asked to sign things all the time: Prescriptions, home nursing care plans, death certificates, diabetic shoe forms.

Less frequently, hospice verifications.

Why was I asked to sign hospice orders for Mr. Taylor? Sure, he was old. Eighty-seven.

He’d survived decades of high blood pressure, two major surgeries, unintentional weight loss, chronic pain, headaches, even a benign brain tumor. But I had never referred him to hospice.

I wouldn’t have diagnosed him as “terminal,” i.e. expected to live six months or less. As far as I could tell, he’d just keep on truckin’ for another year or three.

So why was I being asked to sign hospice paperwork for him? How did this come about?

“Mr. Taylor, why are you in hospice? Are you dying?”

-Not that he knew of. He’d just been told that he’d get more ‘home services’ that way.

“Who set this up for you?”

-It was one of those “home doctors.” Geriatric care providers that offer house calls to infirm seniors when it’s too hard for them to come to a doctor’s office.

Thing is, he was still plenty able to come to my office. And did so regularly.

Apparently, though, the opportunity to get more home services was too good to pass up.

The agency that was providing him at-home medical services referred him to a for-profit hospice firm–one that could collect the daily Medicare fee for a hospice enrollee.

Is it any wonder, then, that we’ve seen a surge in hospice enrollments in the last few years?

Finally, someone has written something about it. Thank you, Washington Post.

John H. Schumann, MD (@GlassHospital) is a general internist and medical educator at the University of Oklahoma School of Community Medicine in Tulsa, OK . He is also author of the blog, GlassHospital , where this post originally appeared.

Bringing Back the House Call

May 20, 2013• 10

By Michael Fleming, MD

Years ago, as a family physician in Louisiana, I made house calls. Certain patients were too sick or too hurt to get to my office. Sometimes a condition or injury had worsened, requiring my evaluation bedside. I would visit patients at home for the simplest of reasons: home was where they needed care.

By the mid-1980s, the pressures of time and money prevented most physicians from making house calls anymore. But I kept seeing patients at home until I retired from my practice after 29 years. Home visits enabled me to better detect, diagnose and treat most health conditions. Many of the patients I saw might otherwise have wound up in an emergency room and eventually been admitted to a hospital.

If we hope to rein in health care costs and improve quality, we need, in effect, to bring back the house call. Americans are living longer than ever before and a higher percentage of the population is elderly, with both trends sure to accelerate drastically in the decades ahead. Baby Boomers are now turning age 65 at the rate of roughly 10,000 per day.

As the older demographic expands, so, too, does the number of people who live with chronic diseases, chiefly diabetes, high blood pressure and heart failure. About three in four of Americans age 65-plus suffer from more than one such chronic condition. The single biggest and fastest-growing contributor to healthcare costs is chronic disease. That’s why an estimated, 49% of our health care costs go toward 5% of Medicare beneficiaries.

Yet the U.S. health care system is still based on a massive misconception: that health care for the sickest of the sick, typically the elderly and the chronically ill, should be carried out almost exclusively in institutions, primarily hospitals, but also nursing homes and assisted living facilities. And that health care delivery should consist largely of, say, a trip to the emergency room or a four-day hospital visit for pneumonia. That kind of episodic engagement represents short-term thinking. When it comes to health care, hospitals are essential, but are only a part of the answer.

Death By Remote Connection

Mar 11, 2013• 1

By James Salwitz, MD

Not long ago the Atlantic published a provocative article entitled “The Robot Will See You Now.” Using the supercomputer Watson as a starting point, the author explored the mind-bending possibilities of e-care. In this near future, so many aspects of medicine will be captured by automated technology that the magazine asked if “your doctor is becoming obsolete?”

The IT version of health includes continuous medical monitoring (i.e. your watch will check all vital functions), robotic surgery without human supervision, lifelong personal database with genetic code core and intensive preventive care modeled for each person’s need; all supervised by artificial intelligence with access to a complete file of medical research and findings. The e-doctor will never forget, never get tired, never get confused, never take a day off and will give 24/7 medical care at any location, anywhere in the world, for a fraction of the cost. Perfect care, everywhere, at every moment, for a pittance.

While the transformation for doctors seems clear, a shift from being at the core of medicine to being what the article described as “super-quality-control officers,” what intrigues me is not how doctors will change (retire); the real question is how patients will adapt to this new healthcare world? Particularly when experiencing extreme or life threatening illness, will patients accept that family, friends and a pumped up Ipad are enough?

Building a Better Health Care System: End of Life Care – A Case Study

Jan 1, 2013• 25

By John Henning Schumann, MD

She was 94 years old with advanced Alzheimer’s. She thought it was 1954 and asked if I wanted tea. Not a bad memory for someone in a hospital bed with a broken left hip.

She’d fallen at her assisted living facility. It was the second time in as many months. She’d broken her collarbone on the previous occasion.

Over the past year, she’d lost thirty pounds. This is natural in the progression of Alzheimer’s. But it’s upsetting to families all the same.

My patient was lucky. She’d lived to 94, and had supportive children who were involved in her care. Her son had long ago been designated as power-of-attorney for her health care. This meant officially that his decisions regarding her care were binding. She was not capable of making sound decisions, medical or otherwise.

The patient had been under the care of a geriatrician. His office chart told me that the option of hospice and palliative care had been discussed with the family. They were interested in learning more; the son had agreed that “Do Not Resuscitate” status was appropriate for his mother. Doing chest compressions on a frail 94 year-old is something none of us want to do.

The morning after her hospital admission for the broken hip, the medical intern called me with an ethical dilemma: “She’s DNR,” the intern explained. “She’s having intermittent VTach on the monitor, and I fear she won’t be stable enough to have the hip repaired. The family is open to the idea of hospice, but I don’t know whether to treat the arrhythmia or not.”

Elaine (not her real name) is one of our brightest interns. She’s thinking about going into geriatrics. Situations like this are in many ways the most meaningful for doctors. Too often we stress about minutiae at the expense of the big picture; helping guide a family and patient through a period of critical illness is of true service.

Occupy with Grace

Nov 23, 2011

By Alexandra Drane

Every Thanksgiving, Engage With Grace has a blog rally asking everyone to take time to start that most difficult of conversations–what do you want to happen near the end of your life? And as ever THCB is honored to take part — Matthew Holt

Once again, this Thanksgiving we are grateful to all the people who keep this mission alive day after day: to ensure that each and every one of us understands, communicates, and has honored their end of life wishes.

Seems almost more fitting than usual this year, the year of making change happen. 2011 gave us the Arab Spring, people on the ground using social media to organize a real political revolution. And now, love it or hate it – it’s the Occupy Wall Street movement that’s got people talking.

Smart people (like our good friend Susannah Fox have made the point that unlike those political and economic movements, our mission isn’t an issue we need to raise our fists about – it’s an issue we have the luxury of being able to hold hands about.

It’s a mission that’s driven by all the personal stories we’ve heard of people who’ve seen their loved ones suffer unnecessarily at the end of their lives.

It’s driven by that ripping-off-the-band-aid feeling of relief you get when you’ve finally broached the subject of end of life wishes with your family, free from the burden of just not knowing what they’d want for themselves, and knowing you could advocate for these wishes if your loved one weren’t able to speak up for themselves.

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