Post
How Can We Increase The Use Of Palliative Care In Medicare?
Health Affairs Blog
In August, 2016, a 93-year-old woman—the grandmother of one of this Blog post’s authors—died of congestive heart failure, five weeks after she underwent surgery to receive a pacemaker. There were alternative care options, but they were not offered to her and her family in a timely manner, at least in part because of Medicare’s long-standing payment rules that value procedures over discussion of goals and alleviation of symptoms.