ETHICAL ISSUES OF HOME HEALTH CARE
Introduction
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Long-term care is becoming a main component of American health care with medicare home health as the fastest growing part of the Medicare program. Long-term care is complex and takes place in hospitals, single-family or group homes, nursing homes, housing with linked services, and specialized day centers; patient populations include children with developmental disabilities, elderly people with physical disabilities and those with Alzheimer's disease, and adults with AIDS. Long-term care and home services include intravenous administration of medicine, devices for mechanical ventilation, meal preparation, and bathing. Providers of health care include skilled nurses, technicians, therapists, family members, and others. Home health care legal and ethical issues pertain to all involved (Kasper, 1997). This research paper will focus on ethical issues of privacy, terminal illness, human rights, living wills, making living wills mandatory for medicare, social worker's involvement, autonomy, the family role, termination of life support, and the right to die. Protection of patient information and home care records is an ethical and legal mandate. Home healthcare nurses must maintain this privacy and confidentiality. Confusion exists between privacy and confidentiality, the protection of one does not inherently include protection of the other. The right to privacy has its base in the law. State and federal governmental agencies are prohibited from invading a per
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1,400 doctors and nurses it was found that 65 percent stated unnecessary treatment was provided to terminally ill patients. Living wills that block this unnecessary and unwanted last-minute procedures would result in substantial savings. Polls and studies show that over two-thirds of Medicare patients would use a living will to reject heroic measures and standard forms of last-minute care; this would be nearly two-thirds of two million Medicare patients who die each year. In a study of five hospitals the last-minute medical care costs for patients with near-death diagnoses who died in the hospital averaged about $10,400 per patient. It is estimated that in the final month of a patient's life the intensive care costs can surpass $100,000; total costs to Medicare for medical care to these patients in their last 30 days was approximately $20 billion in the fiscal year 1995 (Lindblom, 1995).
Congress could require all Medicare patients to have a living will that sets forth the kinds of treatments wanted when near death and unable to communicate clear instructions personally. Instead of being coerced into foregoing care, patients would have the option of demanding or rejecting treatments such as cardiac resuscitation, mechanic
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Some common words found in the essay are:
NASW Code, Cummings Cockerham, Supreme Court, Constitution Common, Davitt Kaye, Medicare Living, Hartman-Stein Henderson-Laribee, HIV Infection/AIDS, Wills Living, Conclusion Long-term, health care, living wills, human rights, home health, home health care, cummings cockerham 1997, wesley 1996, lindblom 1995, terminally ill, cockerham 1997, cummings cockerham, assisted suicide, regarding end-of-life decisions, nasw code ethics, termination life support,
Approximate Word count = 4914
Approximate Pages = 20 (250 words per page)
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