Most older Americans close to death have to make a difficult choice: continue with traditional medical treatment or switch tohospice care, which focuses not on a cure but on easing their remaining days.
Now, Medicare is testing a third alternative: both.
The new pilot program, designed to affect the care of about 150,000Medicare patients over the next four years, will allow patients with terminal diseases to receivehospice care to manage suffering and counseling to plan for the end of life ā but still see doctors and get medical treatments, likechemotherapy or hospitalization, intended to fight their illnesses.
The test program is based on research that shows that patients with access to both so-called palliative care and traditional medicine often end up with a better quality of life and less expensive, intense medical treatment. The approach may even offer the patients a longer life span than those treated with traditional medicine alone.
[For more of this story, written by Margot Sanger-Katz, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07...l?abt=0002&abg=1]
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