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Growth House News
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Resources for Grief Support Group Leaders
The Growth House bookstore has a selection of professional guides to help you run grief groups. Reprintable handouts and suggested group formats are available in workbook formats for both leaders and participants.
(Tuesday, 6 April 2010 18:55:00 GMT)
Advance Directives and Outcomes of Surrogate Decision Making before Death
The New England Journal of Medicine published a study that examined whether patients with advance directives who lacked the capacity to make decisions received their preferred care. Researchers reviewed 3,746 deaths and found that 42.5% of patients needed to make treatment decisions near the end of life. More than 70% of those people lacked the capacity to make choices and the majority, 67.6% had advance directives in place. Those instructions were almost always carried out by decision-making surrogates.
(Tuesday, 6 April 2010 18:55:00 GMT)
What Would Don Berwick Do About Delivery System Reform?
President Obama’s proposed nomination of Don Berwick to head CMS says a lot about the administration’s overarching plan for delivery system reform.
(Tuesday, 6 April 2010 18:55:00 GMT)
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"palliative medicine" - Google News
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Crossing the palliative care hurdle - Ottawa Citizen
(Thu, 29 Jul 2010 04:48:27 GMT+00:00)
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Yahoo! News Search Results for hospice
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Hospice butterfly celebration slated for Herkimer
The Herkimer County Hospice Foundation will hold a butterfly release celebration on Wednesday, Aug. 18, at Herkimer County Community College.
(Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:15:22 -0700)
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NYT > Money & Policy
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Missouri Voters to Have Say on Health Care Law
The first plebiscite on the Obama health care law seems likely to be a low-turnout affair among an electorate dominated by Republican primary voters.
 
(Sat, 31 Jul 2010 19:10:43 GMT)
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BMC Palliative Care - Latest Articles
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End-of-life care in Germany: Study design, methods and first results of the EPACS study (Establishment of Hospice and Palliative Care Services in Germany)
Background:
In order to tackle the deficits in the provision of palliative home care, profound structural changes in the outpatient sector were introduced by law in Germany in 2007. The EPACS study was carried out (Research Accompanying the Establishment of Hospice and Palliative Care Services in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany) to document the quality of inpatient and outpatient end-of-life care in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, before the implementation of these changes. With this article we focus on the study design and methods of the EPACS-Study. We further report first results regarding several aspects of outpatient end-of-life care.
Methods:
The cross-sectional survey was based on a random sample of 5000 inhabitants of Rhineland-Palatinate that had died from May 25 until August 24 of the year 2008. Relatives of these randomly drawn deceased persons were interviewed by means of a written survey.
Results:
The overall response proportion considering only those questionnaires that actually were delivered (n = 3833) was 36.0%. Factors influencing participation were age, sex, and marital status. 355 (25.8%) deceased persons had used professional home care in the four weeks prior to their death, but only very few persons had used a specialised palliative home care service (n = 30; 8.5%). There was a clear gap between the need for specialised outpatient care and the actual utilisation of these services.
Conclusions:
Satisfaction with professional home care was relatively high, but physicians were rated less favourable than nurses. There were deficits especially with respect to physicians' communicative and supportive skills. Further analyses are necessary to provide more detailed information about quality of care in different care settings and for distinct groups. Predictors of good care, as well as obstacles to it, must be further investigated. In the long run, a follow-up survey must be conducted to compare quality of home care before and after the structural changes in Germany.
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Medicare.gov Site Updates
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Medicare.gov Data Updates
This week data was updated on following Medicare.gov tools:
Medicare Options Compare
Medicare Prescription Drug Plan Finder
(Mon, 30 Apr 2007 17:03:57 GMT)
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"united states" "health care policy" - Google News
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Local health care meeting a big deal for the industry - Summit Daily News
(Wed, 28 Jul 2010 06:09:52 GMT+00:00)
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James Hallenbeck, M.D.
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Palliative Care and the Cult of Cure
In 2003 the American National Consensus Guideline project defined palliative care as that aspect of Medicine that works to relieve suffering and promote quality of life. That’s fine, as far as it goes, although the definition includes a lot of...
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