Sick To Death and Not Going to Take It Anymore!: Reforming Health Care for the Last Years of LifeJust a few generations ago, serious illness, like hazardous weather, arrived with little warning, and people either lived through it or died. In this important, convincing, and long-overdue call for health care reform, Joanne Lynn demonstrates that our current health system, like our concepts of health and disease, developed at a time when life was mostly short, serious illnesses and disabilities were common at every age, and dying was quick. Today, most Americans live a long life, with the disabilities and discomforts of progressive chronic illness appearing only during the final chapters of their life stories. Sick to Death and Not Going to Take It Anymore! maintains that health care and community services are not set up to meet the needs of the large number of people who face a prolonged period of progressive illness and disability before death. Lynn offers what she calls an "owner's manual for the health care system," which lays out facts, concepts, strategies, and action plans for genuine reform and gives the reader new ways to interpret information creatively, imagine innovative possibilities, and take steps to implement them. |
Contents
SEEING THE WORLD DIFFERENTLY | 35 |
GOOD CARE FOR SOME PEOPLE | 66 |
IN BRITAIN PROGRESS IN CARE | 88 |
THE CASE FOR REFORMING U S HEALTH CARE | 118 |
An Agenda for Action | 151 |
References | 167 |
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Accessed February 2004 Accessed July 2003 Accessed November 2003 advance care planning agenda American Hospital Association arrangements Available online baby boomers cancer Center challenge chronic conditions chronic disease clinical coordination costs delivery dementia diagnosis disability disease management drugs dying elderly emphysema end-of-life ensure eventually fatal chronic family caregivers fatal chronic illness financing frailty Fund Geriatr health care system health-care heart failure hospice care hospice programs innovation Institute of Medicine issues Last Acts last phase living with serious long-term Lynn Medicaid Medicare Medicare Prescription Drug ment National National PACE Association nursing homes nursing-home older organ system failure PACE pain palliative palliative care palliative-care patients and families payment percent person physicians political population prevention priorities problems providers reform reliable requires serious chronic illness serious illness sick social strategies substantial symptoms tients tion trajectory treatment U.S. Census Bureau
Popular passages
Page 168 - Fried LP, Tangen CM, Walston J, Newman AB, Hirsch C, Gottdiener J, Seeman T, Tracy R, Kop WJ, Burke G, McBurnie MA (Cardiovascular Health Study Collaborative Research Group) (2001) Frailty in older adults: evidence for a phenotype.