This week’s New England Journal of Medicine featured a perspective piece co-authored by Philip Pizzo, MD, former dean of Stanford’s School of Medicine, and David M. Walker discussing recommendations for how U.S. physicians can approach the issue of end-of-life care. Pizzo and Walker co-chaired an Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee on the issue that culminated in a report that we wrote about last September.
In a recent survey, most physician respondents said they “would forgo high-intensity end-of-life treatment” for themselves. Yet many patients in their care are subjected to aggressive treatments that prolong the dying process unnecessarily. The editorial outlines the challenges that we face as a nation regarding end-of-life care and notes that the aging population of the country will soon make end-of-life care a critical issue. The authors recommend, among other things, adding end-of-life care to physician training, incorporating end-of-life conversations into patient care, even before they become terminally ill, and incorporating end-of-life decisions into health care delivery and payment programs.
In an email, Pizzo discussed why fixing our end-of-life care predicament is so important, telling me:
Unfortunately, all too frequently, individual preferences are not honored at the end of life - with many individuals experiencing more invasive interventions than they wished at the end of their life. It is important that we value the quality of life throughout the life journey, including at the end of life. As a nation, our current health-care system fails in end of life care - which has an enormous impact on individuals, their families and loved ones, and our community and nation.
The situation is complicated by politics. In 2009, end-of-life care became a hot-button issue when critics of the Affordable Care Act claimed that a provision to reimburse physicians for advising patients on living wills or advance directives would lead to “death panels.” Pizzo said of the debate:
Having conversations with our families and physicians about the end of life that allow us to express our personal preferences should not be seen as controversial... Sadly, what has made this issue controversial is egregious political rhetoric. The suggestion that health-care reform would result in “death panels” was wrong and highly destructive, frightening many Americans unnecessarily. When such hyperbole and soundbites become the story they have highly negative consequences. That is why the IOM committee underscored the importance of a more accurate and fact based public discussion about end of life care that made it clear that our intentions, as a society, must be to improve quality and honor individual preferences at the end of life.
Previously: No one wants to talk about dying, but we all need to, Study: Doctors would choose less aggressive end-of-life care for themselves, Former School of Medicine dean named to expert panel to reform end-of-life care in America, Communicating with terminally ill patients: A physician's perspective and On a mission to transform end-of-life care
Image, “A portrait of death in modern America,” by Neils Olson
