The Future of Hospice in a Reformed American Health Care System: What Are the Real Questions?

SUMMARY

Many supporters of the hospice movement are concerned about changes being imposed on the movement by market-based reforms in the larger health care industry. But if they are to truly encourage the preservation of hospice’s core goals and values in caring for vulnerable patients with terminal illnesses, they need to understand the realities of day-to-day hospice care under today’s managed care system. The future of hospice in America will not be determined by its tax status or administrative structure, but by its functional integration into new systems of care, flexibility in response to emerging terminal care needs, commitment to standards and measurable quality outcomes and clearer articulation of the value an appropriately financed hospice movement can offer to patients at the end of their lives. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-342-9678. E-mail address: [email protected]]

Notes

For example, hospice physician Ira Byock, in a keynote presentation at the May 1995 National Hospice Organization Management Meeting in Washington, DC, proposed a conceptual model of preserving opportunities for patients at the end of life and of lifelong growth and development through life’s final phase.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Larry Beresford

Larry Beresford is a San Francisco-based independent health care journalist; writer/editor of the Hospice Manager’s Monograph and of the Hospice News Service, a monthly news source for state hospice organizations; and contributor to Hospice Magazine, Faulkner & Gray’s Medicine & Health Perspectives and Health Plan Magazine.