Approximately 12 percent of patients do not receive basic medical care services during their last 2 days of life.
A new study funded by the Medicare Services has revealed that few patients receive medical care on their death bed. The study’s intent was to determine more health institutions to change their policy concerning dying patients.
According to this new study, only a handful of patients receive the visit from a doctor, a nurse or a social worker in their last 2 days of life. The reason behind this study is to urge several health institutions from around the State to change their policies regarding dying patients.
In the light of the new study, several institutions from the United States have voted in favor of creating an extended service, which became available from the 1st of January. According to the guidelines of this new service, all patients who suffer from a terminal illness, may benefit from the visit of a registered nurse or a social worked in the last seven days of their lives. Moreover, the project states that each medical professional needs to spend at least four hours per day with the patient.
The study itself was conducted by Doctor Joan Teno, a professor of medicine, currently working for the University of Washington. The doctor and her team of medical researchers have uncovered that few patients received medical on their death bed.
In order to ascertain the total number of patients who actually were accompanied by a registered medical professional during their last hours, the team had to consult the reports on over 600.000 individuals. All the data on the patients was supplied by Medicare.
According to their conclusions, a little over 12 percent of patients do not receive hospice care during their last two days. Moreover, by introducing into the equation the reports from over 3.400 hospices, the researchers have discovered that approximately 8 percent of patients did not receive basic care services during their last 2 days of life.
The doctor and her team noted that it is very important for a doctor or any other medical professional to be present during the patient’s last day of life, due to the fact that during that time the patient’s symptoms and pains begin to take a turn for the worse.
Although the study actually managed to sway some medical facilities into providing professional care for dying patients or, more specifically, to offer extended services, it does have a couple of limitations and some misinterpretations.
For example, there are some who argue that if you’re African-America and you die on a Sunday, then it is most likely that no medical professional will stand by your bedside.
Photo credits:www.wikipedia.org
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