Thursday, August 27, 2009
Pal-Pourri
A few things featuring palliative care themes this week:
1) American Public Media's Marketplace radio program broadcast a brief article Thursday on 15 Chicagoland Jewell-Osco pharmacies pilot program to make hospice-friendly medications available. The article does not have a lot of detail but it lead me to find out more about the program. The connections of how the program came to be is interesting as covered in this article from DrugTopics.
I too have run into the challenge of finding common hospice medications from local pharmacies, especially liquid formulations and methadone. While I am very lucky to work for a hospice with a local hospice specialty pharmacy, not all insurance companies cover their services. The article interestingly describes hospice patients as high maintenance and therefore not something chain pharmacies want to get involved with. Also mentioned is that this is a specific partnership with Passages Hospice in Chicago and not necessarily available to other hospice agencies.
2) For those who cannot get enough of the 'death panel' meme, I came across a very interesting slideshow of how it has evolved over the past few weeks at Talking Points Memo, a liberal blog.
3) Patrice Villars at Geripal discusses the cliches used when discussing the death of people with cancer. He uses the recent death of Sen. Ted Kennedy as the background on which to pick apart the hidden meaning in such words. Go leave your least favorite phrases in medical/palliative care at Geripal.
