Many hospitals and doctors rightly have campaigned to get more patients to provide information in advance about their end-of-life care choices, but doesn’t that mean that the choices when made should be respected? And if they’re not, what role do the courts have? Paula Span, a New York Times columnist who writes on aging issues,….
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Dementia rates are dropping, but a key Alzheimer’s drug fails
There’s more encouraging news about dementia rates, which a new study has found fell 24 percent between 2000 and 2012, decreasing among Americans 65 and older from 11.6 percent to 8.8 percent. The experts aren’t sure why the rates declined. But it means that 1.5 million or so seniors will be spared the severe cognitive….
Continue Reading‘Superbug’ infection raises key questions about hospitals, data on causes of death
California regulators have reversed themselves and decided to require hospitals to report outbreaks of “superbug” cases, rare infections that also can prove deadly. At the same time, officials in the Golden State haven’t moved to increase the information disclosed on death certificates−data that advocates suggest would give the public clearer outlines of just how severe….
Continue ReadingIs there anything good to say about getting a fatal case of cancer? Yes.
Layton Reid is a 40-something-year-old husband and dad who lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. A few years ago he had a growth taken off his back that turned out to be melanoma. It’s now in his brain. Mr. Reid has a Facebook page that celebrates living life in the moment. He wrote a post on….
Continue ReadingA little Rx for all the awful headlines: four stories of remarkable resilience
The events of recent days ─in Texas, Louisiana, and Minnesota─ have been so tragic that it’s easy to despair. Here are four health-related people stories worth reading to remind us of humanity’s enduring better side: In the horrors of Syrian combat, medical Samaritans strive to maintain some kind of care First, let’s stipulate that there’s….
Continue ReadingReal people’s stories about health care’s headaches, heartaches (and even joys)
In medical science as well as advocacy, the anecdotal has its limits as evidence. But nothing illustrates the complexity, headaches, and heartaches of modern health care like real people’s stories, such as these recommended reads: Why did a dad get a $629 hospital bill when emergency room doctors took just minutes to look at his….
Continue ReadingDoes racial bias by doctors hurt black patients’ ability to get adequate pain management?
The answer is “yes,” according to a new study which finds that medical students hold “fantastical” views about biological differences between blacks and whites, and this may result in blacks receiving less help in managing pain. Another new piece of research finds that doctors communicate with black patients worse than whites about important end-of-life decisions…..
Continue ReadingU.S. urges doctors to slash prescriptions for addictive painkillers
Uncle Sam has sent one of the sternest messages possible to doctors nationwide that they must slash their dispensing of powerful prescription pain-killers. These drugs, for which doctors wrote 249 million prescriptions in 2013, have been blamed in 165,000 fatal overdoses between 1999 and 2014, more than 420,000 emergency room visits in 2013, and the addiction….
Continue ReadingNew research may surprise about expense of end-of-life care for Americans with cancer
Americans are legend for their discomfort in discussing death. That makes conversations about end-of-life care a big challenge, even though the medical attention paid to the dying can drive up health care costs. A quarter of traditional Medicare spending for health care is for services provided to program beneficiaries in their last year of life—a proportion….
Continue ReadingWhen are you really dead? Hospitals still vary in their criteria.
It’s the most final diagnosis a caregiver can make. So why, as a newly published study discloses, are there variances and lapses in how hospitals determine whether a patient is brain dead? The American Academy of Neurology recognized five years ago the complexity of the decision-making in determining brain death, issuing a national practice policy….
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