Compassion & Choices: End of Life Care

Here's a copy of an email I got today from an organization that I "joined" and have a lot of respect for. So I am passing it on to you:


Dear Jane,

Margaret Furlong went to the hospital armed with her advance directive. It stated her wishes clearly: she wanted no elaborate, invasive treatment at life’s end.

But her doctor and his hospital refused Margaret’s wishes. They delivered invasive treatment and forced Margaret to spend her final days in intensive care, tethered to machines and pleading for it all to stop.

The treatment didn’t stop until Margaret died. Her final wish—to have a peaceful, dignified death—was denied.

The final indignity? The hospital billed Medicare for all Margaret’s unwanted treatment—and they were paid in full, with our tax dollars, without objection. 

Margaret was well-loved by her family. They asked Compassion & Choices to help right the wrong she suffered. They recalled how she squeezed their hands to communicate how angry she was that her advance directive was brazenly dismissed.

Today, I’m channeling Margaret’s outrage and asking for your help to ensure what happened to her never happens to another patient.

Compassion & Choices plans to hold doctors and hospitals accountable for ignoring advance directives, and improve Medicare support for patients at life’s end.

We need your special support to succeed. Please contribute today to help us stop doctors and hospitals who overrule our most personal final wishes.

Stories like Margaret Furlong’s are far too common. Despite laws requiring hospitals to make advance directives available to patients, they routinely ignore end-of-life wishes.

Why? Because far too many doctors and hospitals equate death with failure. For reasons of culture, arrogance or the baseless fear of a lawsuit, they instinctively act to delay death as long as possible, even when the patient protests. And there’s another factor that plays into failure to respect advance directives: money. Reimbursement policies promote expensive tests and procedures, often delivered despite patients’ wishes.

In our view, money—specifically, the threat of losing money—would stop the overtreatment of patients and overruling their advance directives. We need Medicare policy to expressly deny payment for any medical procedure that violates the clear instructions in a patient’s advance directive. 

When providers realize that unwanted treatments for a dying patient may be at their own expense, advance directives will acquire unprecedented power and authority.

Won’t you help by contributing to Compassion & Choices today? Your support will help achieve real progress toward shielding people near the end of their lives from the kind of mistreatment Margaret Furlong endured.

Margaret Furlong’s story ends sadly. But, if we succeed, what happened to Margaret will never happen again. Thank you very much for your support.

Sincerely,

Barbara Coombs Lee
President, Compassion & Choices

Comments

[Jeff]

Thanks for sharing, Jane. An important issue.

[Harlan Lewps]

They have a nice mix -- refusing the treatment you do want and insisting you get the treatment you don't want.

[mary ann]

Thanks for this. It makes NO sense whatsoever.