News From the End of Life: Report discusses changes to improve EOL care
Limited resources must be targeted appropriately
A new report, "Financing End-of-Life Care: Challenges for an Aging Population," explores key end-of-life issues, including changing financial incentives to treat disease aggressively at end of life.
The report outlines the current public and private financing systems for end-of-life care and suggests ways that these systems could be updated and improved. For example, it discusses how to build on the success of the 20-year-old Medicare hospice benefit. The report also suggests that the financial incentives for hospitals and physicians related to end-of-life care be redirected away from aggressive inpatient medicine and toward rewards for providing palliative care and consultative services outside the acute care setting.
"Integrating the major end-of-life funding sources may offer at least one solution for providing comprehensive, cost-efficient, high-quality care," says Bonnie J. Austin, JD, coauthor of the report. "Policy intervention is needed to ensure that limited resources are targeted appropriately."
A new report, Financing End-of-Life Care: Challenges for an Aging Population, explores key end-of-life issues, including changing financial incentives to treat disease aggressively at end of life.You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
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