Correctional officers often dictate end-of-life care for incarcerated people who are terminally ill. Most states either don’t have a formal policy or are given leeway — a big concern for families and advocates, as the incarcerated population rapidly ages.
A state law establishes a list of representatives who can make medical decisions for patients unable to convey their wishes. California is late to making the change; 45 other states and the District of Columbia already have next-of-kin laws.
The proportion of Californians dying at home, rather than in a hospital or nursing home, accelerated during the pandemic, a trend that has outlasted the rigid lockdowns linked to the initial shift.
For decades, the U.S. medical establishment has adhered to a legally recognized standard for brain death, one embraced by most states. Why is a uniform clinical standard for the inception of human life proving so elusive?
Private equity firms are seeing opportunities for profit in hospice care, once the domain of nonprofit organizations. The investment companies are transforming the industry — and might be jeopardizing patient care — in the process.
National data shows that Black Medicare patients and their families are not making the move to comfort care as often as white patients are. Experts speculate it’s related to spiritual beliefs and widespread mistrust in the medical system due to decades of discrimination.
Prominent researchers say the nationwide effort to get people to spell out how they want to be treated as they die is not improving patients’ care.
Nearly 2,000 terminally ill Californians have used a 2015 law to end their lives with a doctor’s assistance. A revision of the law will make it easier to do so.
When the covid pandemic hit, Dr. Rebecca Elon was thrust into a new role, primary caregiver for her severely ill husband and her elderly mother. “Reading about caregiving of this kind was one thing. Experiencing it was entirely different,” she says.
Access to physician-assisted death is expanding across the U.S., but the procedure remains in Montana’s legal gray zone more than a decade after the state Supreme Court ruled physicians could use a dying patient’s consent as a defense.
