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Rules Change Could Increase Hospice Use
MONDAY, Dec. 22 (HealthDay News) — More people with life-threatening illnesses would seek hospice care if Medicare and other health insurers dropped the requirement that they give up aggressive treatment of their ailments, a new study finds.
http://health.yahoo.com/news/healthday/ruleschangecouldincreasehospiceuse.html
Cynthia Kinsella
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Clinical Trial
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President American Bladder Cancer Society1 Reply-
I hope that this kind of rule can get instituted. This is exactly the barrier we ran up against. Our issue wasn’t aggressive treatment but we wanted some treatment of my husbands bone marrow disorder as well as hospice service for the Bladder Cancer. The treaters for the MDS saw the Procrit shots as symptom management. I interviewed 3 Hospice Agencies and was turned down by two of them until I worded things in such a way that it became clear to Hospice that we could have both Hospice and Home Health.
This barrier prevented my husband from having Hospice services starting in September instead it was November.
If I an educated, assertive person with great insurance had such a struggle I cannot imagine the difficulties others are having getting the service they deserve.
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