Die at Home? Few Do
If you ask just about anyone, they'd rather die at home. But one in four cancer patients dies in the hospital. According to a study done by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, most advanced cancer patients only go to a hospice within the last three days of their life, something that caused a wonderful hospice organization, where patients could sit in the garden with their families, or have any dinner they liked, even have a family member stay with them, to have to close its doors in my hometown. "While patients are spending fewer days hospitalized in the last month of life, the number of days in ICUs has increased," the foundation reports. Hospice days have also increased, "but a growing proportion of patients begin receiving hospice services in the last three days of life, a time period often too short to provide patients the full benefit of hospice care." Here are some key findings from the Dartmouth Atlas Project: Between 2003-2007 and 2010, the pe