Americans are dying more and more at home: how does this affect relatives

Photo: depositphotos

Americans are more and more people dying at home, not in a hospital: about one fourth of all deaths in the United States are currently at home. For example, from 2000 to 2014 year, the number of deaths at home increased by 29,5%, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Over the same period, the percentage of deaths in hospitals, nursing homes and long-term care facilities has decreased.

From the perspective of the patient, this trend makes sense. Who does not want to die in his own bed instead of the intensive care unit? Social policy and financial problems are pushing people to die at home without cash.

The reason is money

Almost 30% of annual budget Medicare spent on the last 12 months of life of sick or elderly people. The place of death has a significant impact on these costs. Dying at home is much cheaper than in a hospital or nursing home.

If someone wants to cut costs MedicareOne of the easiest ways is to die outside the hospice or hospital. And this is exactly what it seeks. Medicare.

When Congress approved hospice benefits Medicare in the 1983 year, the number of hospices immediately increased. In addition, they switched to a stationary model in order to qualify for a refund. As of 2014, almost 60% of patients in hospice receive their care and die in their own homes.

The family, meanwhile, bears the burden

Family members who care for elderly relatives and sick spouses have a higher level of chronic illness and stress and are at greater risk of depression, social isolation and financial loss than those who do not care for the sick, according to the National Institutes of Health. Their situation even has a name: caregiver syndrome.

Photo: depositphotos

Previously, a Stanford University study found that 40% of families caring for relatives with Alzheimer's disease - which can last 10 to 15 years - die from illnesses related to stress from the person being cared for. Family caregivers provide $500 billion in unpaid services and spend an average of 253 hours per month caring for older adults. This is about 60 hours a week.

Now from 10 thousands of Americans who need constant care, concern for 65 falls on the shoulders of relatives.

Joy Johnston, a journalist from Atlanta, herself faced with home care for her own mother. She sat at her mother's bed for more than one month in 2015.

“Dying at home can be a surprising experience for those dying. This is difficult to prove because no one filled out a customer satisfaction survey, she wrote in one blog. — For family caregivers, the experience of home hospice is not always as rosy as they say. It’s very difficult, like a mental pain that cannot be cured by any therapy.”

Her mother was 75, and she was diagnosed with colon cancer. She was widowed and lived in New Mexico herself. All friends and family members died, except for the daughter Johnston, who came to look after her mother. Johnston was supported by the hospice service, which sent an employee to them for one hour on weekdays.

Over the course of a month, her mother became sicker and sicker. “I listened to her death rattle all night,” Johnston said, describing her mother’s last morning. “I sat with her, holding her hand. … She took a few breaths and froze with her mouth half open.”

“I was alone then. I felt so alone. I called the hospice... But at that moment they were having a farewell party for the employee and no one could come to me for more than an hour,” Johnston recalls. She remembered standing at the window and waiting for someone to come.

“It was terrible,” she said.

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