Hospice patients have tripled since 2000, and today they account for more than half of all deaths in Minnesota...More on Death Cafes.
The remarkable rise of hospice care has been powered by grassroots promotions — books, plays and radio programs to review the various pathways to the grave. “Death Cafes” in public places are proliferating, as forums for topics that were once taboo.
Doctors, the gatekeepers of hospice entries, now accept hospice as a natural alternative to their expensive and often uncomfortable treatments...
Minnesota’s hospice population spiked to 19,253 in 2016, the latest year for which statistics are available. This includes people getting care in their homes, as well as those living in hospice centers. The main reason, say hospice experts, is that doctors have stopped fighting or ignoring hospices...
As medical costs soar, hospice care saves a soaring amount of money. Hospice officials hate to talk about that. Repeatedly, they say hospices give patients what they want, which is not pinching pennies...
Roughly 7,000 Death Cafes have been sponsored globally, according to organizers.
Death is natural, she said, and should be demystified with public conversations. “When did we medicalize death?” said Remke, a University of Minnesota professor and expert in palliative care. “There are worse things than death.”
31 December 2018
Hospice care surging in Minnesota
(and probably elsewhere). As reported by the Pioneer Press:
Ydimentia is now considered a terminal condition. I learned this when a relative developed this condition. Evidently it's not simply an enduring mental decline but a physical health trajectory leading to death fairly swiftly. As a result it now qualifies for hospice care under Medicare. Which is a great relief to care givers and to the afflicted since they get the attention they need while avoiding having to travel for doctors appointments ( a huge logistics hassle for dimentia patients in assisted living) and their therapies go to quality of life not just more pills. It's very humane to treat dimentia this way. But I suspect this new addition to the permitted conditions is a big category and will swell the roles.
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