Aggressive end-of-life care for Medicare dialysis patients is pervasive - amednews.com: Only 20% of the kidney-failure patients were referred to hospice, compared with 40% of the patients dying of heart failure and 55% of cancer patients.
“It’s really a shame that these elderly patients go through such intensive, aggressive treatment, and I’m sure they suffered more because of that rather than being comfortable and dying at home,” said Alvin H. Moss, MD, a Morgantown, W.Va., nephrologist and palliative medicine physician who did not participate in the study. . . . The hospice use by these elderly patients is less than half the national average, which is 45% now. The hospice use for cancer patients is above the national average, and people are more accepting of the fact that cancer patients might be referred to hospice. What most people don’t realize is that most dialysis patients are sicker than cancer patients.”
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