[planekT]

...Excellent post. I do have one point I would like to bring up. Terri should have been turned every one to two hours, she should have had passive range of motion exercising, and she should have had complete oral care twice a day with swabbing to moisten her mouth in intervals. That should have prevented some of the pressure sores, lessened the severity of the contractures, and prevented or lessened the tooth decay. That is good nursing care....

Excellent points by you. Some of the nurses on sworn affadavits said they gave Terri physical therapy behind closed doors and against Michaels wishes. They put their training and their hearts above the SOB's "orders" and went with what they knew should be done for her.

But to the doctors credit on this article, he covered the major points pretty well. He may not be aware of all the minutia unless he was like some of us who became consumed by this atrocity.

Free Republic was a Godsend here. If you wanted to know, you just had to keep reading, if you had the time. The facts were presented here fairly. There was plenty of rebuttal to things that might not have been facts, and arguments over that, but it was pretty much all here.

I also have a point to bring up. Why was Terri admitted to a hopice in the first place? Under Medicare guidlines she wouldn't have qualified. This doctor should know that, but I have never been able to find out if Terri was drawing on Medicare.

I suspect that she was though for this reason. The corporation which owns that Hospice she was in, well Medicare was trying to collect 114 million dollars from them in fraudulent charges. Probably still are.

It's not for certain, but it seems entirely possible that the Hospice committed fraud in Terri's case as well as others.

Medicare will pay for Hospice only if the diagnosis of the patient is for six months to live or less. Her entering there with the feeding tube still in kind of ruled that out, and in fact she was there for 5 years. I guarantee you that fact alone (that she was in a Hospice for 5 years) would bother most medical professionals who are familiar with Medicare prodcedure.

And not only Medicare procedure, but Medicare guidelines are an issue. PVS (Persistent Vegetative State) is not even a recognized diagnosis under Medicare. It is not in the code that they use for these sorts of decisions.

What they did to her was wrong. I am not going to forget about that.

[Goodgirlinred]

Perhaps in the state where this doctor practices, "Hospice" means something other than in Florida. Actually, she should have been in a Skilled Nursing Care facility. Since the good doctor included nurses in his article, that was the umbrella under which good nursing care was covered. Had a nurse coauthored it, she would have brought up the points that I did. I am a Registered Nurse, not practicing at this time.

As for Medicare, she had that huge settlement. That should have been paying for her care. When that was exhausted, then Medicare could have kicked in. Also, what about her health insurance, or Michael's? That should have covered until it was exhausted.