Home Health & Hospice Week

Nine out of 10 Medicare beneficiaries' deaths are associated with chronic illness, and most people with chronic illnesses say they want to die at home, according to the Dartmouth Atlas Project. But those wishes appear to be going unheeded, with 55 percent of those who express a preference for dying at home actually dying in the hospital. "Americans increasingly are treated to death, spending more time in hospitals in their final days, trying last-ditch treatments that often buy only weeks of time, and racking up bills that have made medical care a leading cause of bankruptcies," says the Associated Press. "The average time spent in hospice and palliative care, which stresses comfort and quality of life once an illness is incurable, is falling because people are starting it too late."