[magellan]

Say you’re dying of cancer but have a few months left. You are trying to enjoy what time you have left with your family. All of a sudden, you can’t get your diabetes medication. Your blood sugar shoots up. When your sugar is up your immune system is compromised. You get pneumonia and die. The cause of death was pneumonia secondary to hyperglycemia; not cancer.

Thanks, this explains an important point.

Sometimes, especially with out-patient hospice, it takes time for the terminal disease to run its course.

[az wildkitten]

Ideally, patients get into hospice a few months before they die to actually benefit from the service. The Nazis(CMS) have our administrators and physicians so cowered, they are reluctant to admit anyone who isn’t almost actively dying. This makes it difficult to manage efficiently making hospices go broke (and we are non-profit but if you can’t pay the bills you can’t survive)

Really frustrating professionally, I don’t think there is anything wrong with admitting someone, adjusting their medications, improving their state of health and discharging them which can and does happen with end stage cardiac, pulmonary and kidney conditions. A little morphine which was the drug of choice for these conditions for centuries can make a big difference at the end of the road. Sometimes more than a year of good quality time.