Posted on 06/02/2013 7:16:40 PM PDT by Lorianne
Terminally ill patients are dying prematurely because of a controversial 'death pathway' being followed by NHS doctors.
Medical experts have warned some patients are being wrongly labelled as close to dying when they still have months to live.
They say the system used by the Health Service and many care homes could amount to 'backdoor euthanasia'.
Under the Liverpool Care Pathway, doctors can withdraw fluids and drugs from patients if they are deemed close to death. Many are then put on continuous sedation so they die free of pain.
But sedation can often mask signs of improvement, meaning doctors may be closing the door on people who would otherwise live for months.
Experts issued a warning about the practice in a letter to a national newspaper, in which they claimed a 'national crisis' is emerging in patient care.
They include Peter Millard, emeritus professor of geriatrics at the University of London, and Dr Peter Hargreaves, palliative care consultant at St Luke's cancer centre in Guildford, Surrey.
Prof Millard said yesterday: 'We're moving to a situation where we are discussing economic factors around older people's care.
'We're not discussing how we care for old people; we're just discussing how we pay for them.'
He added: 'The Government is rolling out palliative care - which is helping people die happy. What we should be doing is rolling out support to help them to live.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Felicity Smart’s 98-year-old friend and neighbour was living independently in her own home and cooking for herself before falling ill with an infection.
But she died severely dehydrated and heavily sedated after being put on the Liverpool Care Pathway in hospital.
Mrs Smart, left, believes she was simply left to die. ‘I honestly think it was because they thought she wasn’t worth treating,’ said the 65-year-old medical writer.
‘Once you have been put on the Liverpool Care Pathway, that is it. You don’t come off it again.’
Mrs Smart had known the spinster, who had only one living relative, for 20 years.
She was shocked at the change in her ‘frail but alert’ neighbour when she visited her in hospital in London last year.
‘She was being given oxygen, but nothing to hydrate her. She had a tube in her arm, which I presumed was for pain relief, and next to her bed was a sponge on a stick that was used to moisten her mouth when it got dry.
‘The combination of dehydration and powerful painkillers can only lead to one thing. She died within three days.’
Ladies and Gentlemen this is the Death panel that Palin told us about. Coming soon to your Grandmother and Grandfather here in the Good Old USA.
Those responsible for turning UK hospitals into death camps for the British people should be lined up against a wall and shot. People go to hospital for cures, or at least care ... and not to be killed.
If we want to be killed, we can always just go try walking the streets of any of those cities or areas where the government (in UK, major parts of Europe, and increasingly now in USA, too) has seen fit to import tens of thousands of hostile, violent, murderous anti-Christian “immigrants” from certain places we aren’t allowed to mention...?
A “stick and a sponge”. Just like Jesus.
Wow
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. — Matthew 25:40
The lost will be in a big pickle.
The Obamacare people should reference great Britain’s healthcare system as the future of (sort of) medicine here in the US.
Obama care pathway.
just wonderful.
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Backdoor euthansia? With holding fluids isn't back door euthanasia - it's kicking the front door in killing! And "euthanasia' means "good death" or something like that; killing the sick and feeble and elderly is not "good death", it's plain and simple murder, with torture first.
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It’s been here for quite some time. It’s called hospice.
You are very Naïve if you believe that.
Hospice is nothing like Euthanasia.
I don’t think that’s right (unless it’s a government run hospice).
I’ve known 2 people who died in hospice. One was there over a year! He was supposed to die within weeks. He was receiving fluids and nutrition all the way up until the morning of his death. In fact he was eating solid food (although mushed up and fed to him by mouth with spoon) up until the week before he died). He was only lightly sedated for pain and able to speak up until a few days before he died.
My father, 83 years old, had Alzheimer's disease, an arrhythmic heart, diabetes and a bladder infected by antibiotic resistant bacteria. He was unable to walk and couldn't leave his room in the assisted living facility in which he resided.
For some reason dad wouldn't drink water (he did that occasionally) and his doctor had prescribed “palliative care” requiring intravenous fluids, a level of care requiring he be moved to a rehab center next door. Medicare refused to authorize it and refused authorization for hospitalization when his temperature spiked up to 105 degrees.
They would only approve hospice - giving him morphine in ever larger doses while withholding water and food. This “treatment” killed my father.
We contacted the county coroner and requested an autopsy. That request was rejected but I have to tell you, that the coroner insisted he died of heart failure which is NOT a cause of death. I do not know specifically what correspondence was exchanged by the county and Kaiser Permanente, dad's insurance company. My family believes dad was murdered by Medicare via dehydration.
The original purpose of hospice is being perverted by such treatments. I don't believe hospice was intended for euthanasia of dying patients.
Shut up. You know nothing about what happened to my father.
Well Medicare is government healthcare.
So my point still stands.
If he had been on private pay, he would have gotten the care he needed.
I can only judge hospice by the one near me. They do everything in their power to assure a dignified death for those who are terminal.
You are correct I know nothing about what happened to your father. I am sorry for your loss.
Private pay?
What do you think Kaiser Permanente medical insurance is? Everyone today over 65 has Medicare! Government forces private insurers to accept it, and medical decisions must pass through a board for approval.
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