Americans Change Care For The Dying
Jack D. Gordon, President
Hospice Foundation of America [Note: Mr. Gordon served as Chairman and CEO
of HFA until his death in 2005.]
Throughout the '50s and '60s the technology which helped win World War II was being adapted to peaceful purposes, including health care applications. Innovative techniques and machines brought the promise of greatly improved health.
In retrospect we can see that along with these advances we have elevated the importance of the disease and diminished the importance of the individual. For the terminally ill, that has not been a good tradeoff.
In response to the over-technologizing of medicine, people in hundreds of communities across the country searched for a more humane way to help dying people. It was a decentralized movement, without a high profile leader, and it resulted in the organization of hospices to meet needs felt locally in these communities. From the first hospice in 1974, there are now over 3,000 hospices across the nation.
The hospice model of care was a statement to organized medicine that it should take notice of how patients want to be treated. Hospices recognized that a terminally ill person was not defined simply in terms of his or her disease, but was the same human being as before, only with a whole new set of issues to confront. And this complex human required individualized care, with the patient being in charge. For the first time in the modern era, the patient and the family were viewed with profound respect.
The principles underlying the hospice concept of care grew from a collective wisdom and need. We think those concepts applied broadly to the health care system, not just the terminally ill, would make for healthier people.
Tell us what you think.
