Physicians with an expertise in palliative care are critical given the aging population generally, but costs of care for Americans tends to increase near the end of their lives, most studies show. And specialized palliative care is known to improve health outcomes for patients with serious illness who tend to be at the end of their lives.
“All scenarios demonstrated a worsening of the patient-to-physician ratio for at least 25 years , due to an inadequate physician supply coupled with a growing cohort of Medicare beneficiaries eligible for palliative care,” the Duke researchers wrote. “Our analysis also predicted untenable current and projected workloads for specialty palliative care physicians,” the Duke researchers and colleagues wrote. “We estimated that there was one palliative care physician for 808 eligible patients, and if each patient was evaluated, on average, once every three months , each palliative care physician would need to perform 10 patient visits per day over 48 weeks per year to meet the current demand.
More broadly, physicians, teaching hospitals and medical schools have been pushing for an increase in funding for residency slots in all disciplines.
Contact Planned a Parenthood.
We'll keep dying anyway, Forbes. Probably.