Blog
If a medical treatment worked only a fraction of the time and resulted in bad outcomes more often than not, practitioners would not make this treatment the default approach. Yet that is exactly what has happened when it comes to CPR for individuals 85 years and older who suffer cardiac arrest in a community setting.
Journal Article
To compare reports about care experiences of individuals who died within 1 year of survey with reports of those who did not.
Commentary
It's remarkable how often primary care doctors never get around to talking with their patients about an advance care plan before that fateful day arrives. So my colleagues and I end up having the conversation in an ER conference room or the patient's bedside at 2 o'clock in the morning, writes Art Kellermann.
Blog
Despite remarkable progress in medical science, the global death rate is still 100 percent. So the question is not whether we will live, or die. The question is where and how we'll die, and who will be with us when we do.
Journal Article
There is a growing emphasis on promoting medical treatments that provide the most benefits relative to their costs.
Journal Article
This study seeks to develop a new prognostic model, the Patient-Reported Outcome Mortality Prediction Tool (PROMPT), for six-month mortality in community-dwelling elderly patients.
Journal Article
Cancer Quality-ASSIST indicators are useful for practical quality assessment of cancer end-of-life care in an academic medical center.
Journal Article
Evaluation of implementation of a standardized order set can identify areas for quality improvement and missed opportunities for use.
Journal Article
Communication is an ongoing challenge for clinicians working with people facing life-threatening illnesses and end of life. Family conferences offer patient-focused, family-oriented care that brings together patients, family members, and health care providers.
Journal Article
Longitudinal studies examining care for seriously ill patients are needed to understand patients' experience of illness, evaluate interventions, and improve quality of care. Unfortunately, such studies face substantial methodological challenges. This article describes such challenges and the strategies used to overcome them in a successfully implemented palliative care intervention trial for veterans.
Journal Article
High Medicare spending is not associated with better health outcomes at a regional level, but patients admitted to California hospitals from 1999 to 2008 had lower inpatient mortality in those hospitals that spent more on end of life care.
Journal Article
The authors estimated at pounds 1.8 billion the cost to the taxpayer of care for the 127,000 patients dying from cancer in 2006. The equivalent cost for the 30,000 people dying from organ failure was pounds 553 million. Resources of pounds 16 to pounds 171 million could be released for cancer.
Multimedia
In this September 2010 Congressional Briefing, Neil Wenger describes a yearlong study on improving end-of-life care that can help policymakers address payment systems and other issues pertaining to quality of care for critically ill patients.
Past Event
Neil Wenger describes a yearlong study on improving end-of-life care that can help policymakers address payment systems and other issues pertaining to quality of care for critically ill patients.
Journal Article
Patients admitted to a teaching hospital for an end-of-life illness generally receive high-quality medical care, but there is a need for better communication about family expectations and for timely efforts to keep patients comfortable.
Journal Article
This study assessed hospice use by men dying of prostate cancer and compared the use of high-intensity care between those who did or did not enroll in hospice. Those who enroll in hospice are less likely to receive high-intensity end-of-life care.
Journal Article
Most physicians report they would not discuss end-of-life options with terminally ill patients who are feeling well, instead waiting for symptoms or until there are no more treatments to offer.
Commentary
What can you choose when life restricts you to the narrow width of a hospital bed and your view is one of life's final horizon, ask Steven M. Asch, Karl Lorenz, and Diane Meier.
Journal Article
Using data for 1996 to 2004 from the United States Health and Retirement Study, this article examines the differences between parents and childless older people in financial transfers to people other than their children.
Journal Article
Hospice care has been found to improve symptom management, quality of death and quality of life at the end of life.
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