Thank you! Recently went through situation with Palliative care nurse practitioner telling me my step mom only had one year to live and I should put her in hospice, despite FACT no medical doctor caring for her had stated any such thing! I posted complaint on hospital blog and her supervisor was in my SM room the next day apologizing for this young woman’s actions. Also assured me that this so called young nurse had no place in denigrating the actions of my SM Doctor. The young woman told me that doctors are not as aware as she, they do not treat the whole person, but concentrate only on their specialty. Head of palliative care at the hospital assured me this nurse was removed from duty and mandated to attend further training.
It was really quite surreal listening to this nurse as she told me I needed to let my SM just suffer death from pneumonia or whatever and give her pain killers...I did ask her if she was the death squad for Obama....upset her...in between the two personal phone calls she took while telling me to kill off my step mom.
Sorry for what you went through! Many new Palliative Care agencies are desperate to get their ‘numbers’ up in order to survive and like some Hospice programs out there are putting patients in their care who don’t meet guidelines or need the service. Many MD’s work with specific Hospice programs and rely on nurses to make recommendations.
The good news is Medicare has really cracked-down on new admissions to hospice. The qualifiers have gotten more stringent to help eliminate fraud and abuse. New Quality Improvement indicators have gone into effect for ALL programs regarding admission to hospice care, care planning, resource management, pain management, and other quality of life issues.
The one sad thing (among MANY) with Obamacare is the 30 day readmit penalty. If a patient is released by a hospital and returns to hospital within 30 days there is a penalty regarding payment. Most hospitals now will not admit the patient (will keep patient in ER for observation) and may refer to hospice/palliative care in order to not deal with penalty.