Barbara Bush’s End-Of-Life Decision Stirs Debate Over ‘Comfort Care’
The former first lady’s announcement “not to seek additional medical treatment” and to focus on “comfort care” shone a light on end-of-life choices.
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JoNel Aleccia was a senior correspondent for KFF Health News until October 2022.
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The former first lady’s announcement “not to seek additional medical treatment” and to focus on “comfort care” shone a light on end-of-life choices.
Supporters call it the strongest move yet to document a patient’s advance wishes in cases of severe dementia. Critics say it would deny basic care to society’s most vulnerable.
Starting this spring, aspiring doctors at the Oregon Health & Science University must prove they can communicate about difficult subjects ranging from admitting medical mistakes to notifying families about a patient’s death.
Dr. Charles Emerick and his wife, Francie, died together last spring after both being diagnosed with terminal illnesses. First, they let their daughter turn on the camera.
The makers of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, or MoCA, say the test wasn’t meant for the masses. Now they’re working on a “mini-MoCA” that people who are worried about possible dementia can take online.
Citing fears of losing federal funds, California is the latest state to require discharge of terminally ill residents from state veterans homes if they plan to end their lives with lethal drugs.
For more than 50 years, the program for the poor and sick has been required to ferry certain clients to and from medical appointments. But a few states have sought — and received — waivers to that rule.
Orders for potassium iodide reportedly jumped after a Jan. 2 war of words between Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.
A vital tradition is gaining steam as more families use the holiday gathering to discuss and document advance-care plans.
Fewer than half of health care workers at a nonprofit Florida hospice had completed advance directives for end-of-life care.
Patients with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias can say in advance if and when they want caregivers to stop offering food and fluids by hand.
U.S. hospice agencies promise to be available around-the-clock to help patients dying in their homes. But a Kaiser Health News investigation shows that in an alarming number of cases, that promise is broken.
Tiny Washington state hospice accepts no federal funds, relies on community volunteers and donations to serve the dying.
Nora Harris, 64, who had early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, raised questions about the power — and limits — of an advance directive to withdraw care.
A new link creates two-way access to the state registry that documents the type of medical care sick and frail patients want — or refuse.
Nearly 60 percent of the U.S. blood supply is provided by people older than 40 — and most of that is from folks in their 50s and 60s. Why is it so hard to find young donors?
A Washington state man inherited the mutated gene that stole his mother’s mind. He doesn’t have the disease, and doctors don’t know why.
Oregon court says Alzheimer’s patient Nora Harris must be spoon-fed. But her husband says she never wanted to live like this.
In the first year of payments for advance-care planning sessions, once decried as ”death panels,“ use is higher than expected, new data show.
In the first case of its kind in the U.S., the company was ordered to pay damages to the hospital where a patient died of an infection linked to a contaminated scope. But jurors also found the hospital negligent, and it was ordered to pay the patients' family $1 million.
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