Further Clarification Emerges About End-Of-Life Care Counseling

Main Category: Palliative Care / Hospice Care
Also Included In: Seniors / Aging;  Psychology / Psychiatry
Article Date: 20 Aug 2009 - 5:00 PDT

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News outlets continue to explain how end-of-life care counseling works.

NPR talks with Dr. David Casarett, associate professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania who started the palliative care service at the VA hospital in Philadelphia, about "the rhetoric around the end-of-life issues addressed in some of the proposed health care legislation" (Block, 8/18).

The Associated Press reports on a study about end-of-life counseling: "As a political uproar rages over end-of-life counseling, a new study finds offering such care to dying cancer patients improves their mood and quality of life. The study of 322 patients in rural New Hampshire and Vermont also suggests the counseling didn't discourage people from going to the hospital. The research didn't look at costs. The study's publication in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association coincides with the fight over health care overhaul proposals in Congress" (Johnson, 8/18).

CNN International defines some of the terms commonly used in the health care reform debate including end-of-life counseling (8/18).

Related KHN story: Doctors Providing End-of-Life Care See Benefit In Current Controversy

This information was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with kind permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives and sign up for email delivery at kaiserhealthnews.org.

© Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.

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