This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on Web of Science (2)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Dilemmas and Opportunities

Robert A. Pearlman, MD, MPH

Arch Intern Med. 1988;148(12):2538.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Hospice is a successful model for providing palliative care and psychosocial support to terminally ill patients. Although most patients who receive hospice care have cancer, patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome increasingly are taking advantage of these programs. Since 1983, Medicare has provided hospice reimbursement for patients meeting four criteria: (1) life expectancy of six months or less as certified by a physician; (2) unable to benefit from aggressive or curative therapy; (3) able to receive at least 80% of care at home; and (4) availability of an individual who can provide custodial care and serves as a "proxy" decision maker for health care decisions if the patient becomes mentally incapacitated.¹

See also p 2540.

Unfortunately, predictions regarding life expectancy are often imprecise, a problem in determining eligibility for hospice care. In this issue of the ARCHIVES, Forster and Lynn² present further evidence of this lack of accurate prognostication . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
Seattle Veterans Administration Medical Center Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology Department of Medicine University of Washington Seattle, WA 98108

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?