8mm
Posted on 01/18/2008 6:46:10 PM PST by Coleus
Top medical officials from around New Jersey plan to meet next month for talks that could profoundly change the way doctors and hospitals in the state treat dying patients. Many New Jerseyans at the end of life receive futile medical care, and studies show extremely high rates of hospitalizations, interventions and physician consultations for such patients even though they do not live longer or suffer less than patients in other states.
Hospitals' medical directors plan to meet Feb. 13 at the New Jersey Hospital Association in Princeton to take on the issue. "We can do a good job of resuscitating people and putting them on ventilators," said Aline Holmes, the NJHA's senior vice president of clinical affairs. "But when we know they can't go home, we have to do a better job of talking to families and patients about what it all means."
The meeting, which also will involve ethics experts from the Medical Society of New Jersey, is coming two months after a series of reports in The Star-Ledger on the treatment of dying patients. The two-day series, called "New Jersey's High Cost of Dying," chronicled several families who said their loved ones were subjected to painful and unnecessary medical interventions in their final days. The series also examined several studies, particularly one by the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice in New Hampshire, that showed Medicare patients in New Jersey undergo more tests, see more doctors and endure more procedures at the end of life than patients in any other state.
Since then, the trustees of the New Jersey Hospital Association have asked the association's ICU Collaborative, a group of intensive care experts from 35 hospitals, to examine ways to end futile care for terminally ill patients.
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
Well, what’s to say.
Euthanasia?
Another fine example of how we’ve got to ban certain “worthless” people from receiving medical care because the supply of medical care is not keeping pace with the growth in demand.
bump to myself. I’ll have end of life comments later.
Cool, this will help out with rising medical costs, social security, and the burden on the families.
Next let’s see about the disabled who will never be able to live a normal live, why spend there? We can eliminate the very dumb, “lifer” welfare recipients, why not?
Might as well do the right thing and knock them out before they are born.
Liberal logic:
Once a person is beyond the age when they can contribute monetarily to the system, why keep them alive? There is no government incentive. From the last point of productivity until their death, they become a burden.
Yo, Jersey, that’s why there’s hospice.
This is such a joke.We just went through hell trying to save the life of a woman’s mother.They just stopped all care-in New Jersey.Her mother walked into the hospital and was dead 2 weeks later.For anyone reading this go to Priestsforlife.org for your state to get the paperwork for when you go in the hospital.
Beat me to it.
Slightly different headline here in swimmer country:
Bay State's Polling Places Reviewing How They Treat Dead Voters
.
“Quality of life” was the catch phrase our mother’s doctor liked to use to try to get us to approve cessation of care for her at ninety-two - as in “she has no more quality of life”, even though she still seemed to enjoy music and recognize some of us occasionally through her dementia - we finally gave approval when she fell and broke her hip, figuring the recovery process would be too long, difficult, and painful for her - not an easy decision, and I still wonder some times.......
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