Where Americans Die - Is there really no place like home?
May 24, 2022
In a perspective published in the New England Journal of Medicine on March 17, 2022, Brigham and Women’s researchers Melissa W. Wachterman, MD, MPH, Elizabeth A. Luth, PhD, Robert Semco, BSE, and Joel S. Weissman, PhD, discuss the shift for end of life care in the past decade from hospitals and nursing facilities to homes. In 2017, for the first time in decades, a third of Americans died at home, as perception among the public and clinicians equate a “good death” with dying at home. The authors explore the cultural factors and financial incentives driving where people in the United States choose to die and why dying at home may not be the best choice for everyone.
Interview with Dr. Melissa Wachterman on cultural factors and financial incentives driving where people in the United States choose to die.
Supplement to the N Engl J Med 2022; 386:1008-1010
Melissa Wachterman is a palliative care physician and an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Stephen Morrissey, the interviewer, is the Executive Managing Editor of the Journal.
In Difficult Cases, ‘Families Cannot Manage Death at Home’
March 26, 2022 New York Times
Health care researchers argue that hospice facilities could better serve some terminal patients, and ease the burden on exhausted loved ones.
