Imagine Quality at End of Life

Katy Butler's memorable book Knocking on Heaven's Door is almost a textbook for care of the failing elderly patient.  From the dust jacket: "Like so many of us, the Buler always assumed her aging parents would experience healthy, active retirements before dying peacefully at home. Then her father suffered a stroke that left him incapable of most activities of daily living. Her mother was thrust into full-time caregiving, and Katy Butler became one of the 24 million Americans who help care for their aging and failing parents.”

Imagine a Medicare ‘Part Q’ for Quality at the End of Life is an article in the NY Times by Katie Butler that appeared by years after the publication of her book.  It begins:

"I spent the last Sunday of my father’s life sitting by his bed on the hospice unit in a small Connecticut hospital. He was dying of pneumonia, once called “the old man’s friend.” There was a nondenominational chapel down the hall, and a sheet cake in the kitchen. His hand was warm. Reassured by the quiet presence of the hospice nurses and feeling the mysterious quickening of life through his veins, I gave over to being his daughter and letting him be my father one last time."