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  Awards Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Ctr. Boston Medical Center Boston University Brigham and Women's Hospital Broad Institute Cambridge Health Alliance Caritas St. Elizabeth's Medical Ctr. Children's Hospital Boston Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Grants Harvard University Joslin Diabetes Center Lahey Clinic Mass. General Hospital Mass. Health Law McLean Hospital MIT New England Baptist Hospital Personnel Moves Public Health Research Short White Coat Tufts-New England Medical Center Tufts University UMass Memorial Medical Center University of Massachusetts VA Medical Centers    A Healthy Blog Running A Hospital Nature Network Boston SciBos - Corie Lok's blog Kevin, M.D. Blog, MD Nurse at small Dr. Gwenn Is In Healthy Children blog WBUR's CommonHealth Other Globe Blogs
Elizabeth Cooney is a health reporter for the Worcester Telegram &
Gazette.
Boston Globe Health and Science staff:
Scott Allen Alice Dembner Carey Goldberg Liz Kowalczyk Stephen Smith Colin Nickerson Beth Daley Karen Weintraub, Deputy Health and Science Editor, and Gideon Gil, Health and Science Editor. Short White Coat blogger Ishani Ganguli Short White Coat blogger Jennifer Srygley  Week of:
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« Joslin name goes NASCAR | Main | Today's Globe: Caritas deal off, transplanted DNA, fish from China » Thursday, June 28, 2007When hospice care is 'too late'By Elizabeth Cooney, Globe Correspondent About 12 percent of Massachusetts family members said their loved ones entered hospice care too late, resulting in less satisfaction with their care, according to a national survey. The survey also found that the number of days people spent in hospice care affected satisfaction levels less than whether they got that care too late. Brown University researchers report in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management that 11.4 percent of respondents thought their relatives received hospice care too late. In Massachusetts, the figure was 12.6 percent. Vermont had the lowest rate, at 7.8 percent, and South Carolina had the highest, 15 percent. There was a strong association between people who said their loved ones were referred to hospice too late and also reported dissatisfaction with the quality of care. The researchers expected this to be true for the shortest stays, but even referrals to hospice two days before death were called "the right time" by three-quarters of the relatives. "We firmly believed, in our hearts and souls, that people of short length of stay were going to have greater unmet needs, more concerns and more dissatisfaction," lead author Dr. Joan M. Teno said in an interview. "Much to my surprise, the opposite is true." Among people whose relatives had only two days of hospice care, only 24 percent said that was too late. Teno said she would have expected a much higher rate. Hospice experts say that dying people and their families benefit the most when they receive hospice care for at least three months, but the average stay lasts less than two months. Thirty percent of hospice patients die in seven days or fewer, according to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, which worked with the Brown researchers to survey more than 100,000 families from 631 hospices. Posted by Elizabeth Cooney at 04:04 PM
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