Fall 2003 - Hospice of the Rapidan

From a patient’s family member:
“I don’t know what we would have done without Hospice. You made [her] last days mean so
much as she said good-bye to her friends and family.”
Survey Sez
In February of last year, the
National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) released the results of a survey designed to
see how Americans feel and what they know about hospice and palliative care. Here are some of the
highlights:
Nine out of ten wanted a palliative care consult (in other words, they’d like the option to discuss comfort
measures when curative treatments show little or no promise of success)
Most (86% of those surveyed) believed that people with a terminal illness would like to receive end-oflife
care at home (yet 75% still die in hospitals each year)
Three out of five (63%) considered hospices most knowledgeable about end-of-life care, with physicians
a surprisingly distant second at 17%
A majority (42%, or 2 out of 5) thought insurance pays for specialized end-of-life care, with only 15%
aware that Medicare (through the Hospice Medicare Benefit) does so; more people (17%) thought it
would be out-of-pocket expenses—so we’ve obviously got a long way to go in educating the country
about hospice care!
The survey asked participants to give their opinions on what they think other Americans want; it did not
ask if participants had any prior experience with hospice or other end-of-life care (or lack of it)—so when