Good hospice care is carefully monitored with individualized plans of care and feeding is tapered and ceased when these unfortunate events occur. It's not difficult to handle these things on an individualized basis with proper staffing and properly trained staff. These are not reasons to deny assisted hydration and nutrition.
We routinely get calls from patients who have feeding tubes for years from things such as esophageal cancer, who are active, mobile and wish to continue receiving feeding even on hospice care, but have been told by numerous other hospice providers that they must discontinue tube feeding if they want to be on hospice. This is a lie. There is no reason whatsoever that patients who have been successfully maintained for years with tube feeding have to give it up just to get accepted onto hospice care.
There are circumstances where assisted nutrition and hydration is overly burdensome. In those cases there is nothing wrong with discontinuing them or not initiating them. There are individuals who make their wishes known in advance directives that they do not desire assisted nutrition and hydration should they become incapcitated and be unable to express their wishes. Their wishes must be respected.
But the idea that tube feedings and IVs are always bad or burdensome is simply false and it is a sad reality that many people are dying prematurely due to dehydration from premature withdrawal of fluids and food.