New Law Could Help Hospice Patients Continue Aggressive Medical Treatments - Kaiser Health News
Sphere: Related ContentBut the new health law could lead to a major change in Medicare policy that allows patients to get treatment and hospice care simultaneously.
Experts say this dual approach, known as "concurrent care," may be especially useful for people using dialysis to extend their lives, and those waiting for organ transplants that may not come in time. More broadly, advocates say, the change may encourage people with any kind of terminal illness to take advantage of hospice care earlier.
"Having personally had to explain what’s good about hospice to families that think I’m about to shove them onto an iceberg, I know it’s a very difficult decision," says Diane Meier, director of the Center to Advance Palliative Care at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.
It will be easier to get the terminally ill to accept hospice care, she says, "if you can say to
families, you don’t have to make this terrible choice here — it’s more, not less."Medicaid Change
The new law instructs Medicaid, the state-federal program for the poor, to cover simultaneous hospice and curative care for children with terminal illnesses immediately. And it directs the federal Medicare program, which covers seniors and disabled people, to launch up to 15 pilot projects around the country to test the concept. If the experiment is deemed successful and doesn’t increase costs, then Medicare could make the benefit available to everyone in hospice.
Someone with heart disease, for example, could get cardiac drugs that improve blood circulation and at the same time receive hospice’s palliative services. Those include a team of doctors and nurses devoted to easing physical pain and symptoms, and social workers and
clergy who help patients and their families accept death. Hospice staff typically come to a dying person’s house or nursing home a few times a week.
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