Potential reduction in Hospice reimbursement

There is a possibility that Medicare will phase out an annual adjustment to the Hospice wage index in the next 3 years. I know that many of you have been blessed to receive services from Hospice. Read the response of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization to the Bush Administration’s proposal to reduce funds to Hospice Centers all over the U.S. Get in touch with your representatives from the Senate and Congress and let them know that you are against this proposal. For those of you that will be caregivers of terminally ill people in the future, you too need to protest because from my experience with Hospice it will be the best thing that happens to you and yours.

Knowledge of hospice

My neighbor’s father died last week. He never came home from his last trip to the hopital. He went to a home and then was taken back to the hospital to be put on morphine for his last few days. Mike had kept him at home for as long as he could. His father told him to keep him at home until his death. But it was too hard not to call the ambulance one last time. He told me that 5 years before they called and it saved his life for 5 more years, so I am guessing that he was “hoping” He was in his mid-eighties. As he spoke to me teary eyed II wondered, but did not ask, because his father had just died that day, “why didn’t they use hospice?” They could have provided that last week of care and his father and Mike would have had their wish come true. He regretted that his father, like his mother, years ago had to be in the hospital and not at home. After seeing the wonderful people who came to enroll my aunt into hospice, I would have nothing different for myself or those I love if possible. Mike is a hard working, blue collar, lower middle class guy who may not have understood about hospice or never really got all the nformation about how to go about getting into hospice. Everyone should check into all of their options when approaching death. From all the services I learned about for my aunt and the kindness of the people I met, I would rather have then guiding my caregiver than makiing my family endure the trip to the hospital if at all possible.