It happens more often than you think (and it’s not their fault).
Two weeks ago, I received a phone call from my mom’s hospice nurse, Corey.
“The medical team is thinking about live discharging your mom off of hospice services,” he said. “She hasn’t had a significant decline in six months.”
He went on to describe all the ways my mother’s end-stage dementia hadn’t progressed enough in the past several months to justify end-of-life care anymore.
Because she was now chair-bound, she was no longer a fall risk.
Because she had optimal vitals, she was not clinically close enough to death.
Because she’d actually come off some medications for behavioral issues, they considered her improved.
Because she was nonverbal, she wasn’t acting out or swearing at staff anymore.
If you were to check off all the boxes Corey and the rest of my mom’s medical team had to for Medicare purposes, by all means you’d consider her improved.
