We feel mother was killed by Hospice. Hospice came in and said we want to help and make her comfortable, read the bible, do her nails, get her a better mattress, sing to her. All of these things were just to get her started on morphine and kill her. If you are truly dying and in pain hospice is good but if you are just old and sick they will kill you. They would always give her morphine and say oh she said she was in pain, when we ask our mother she said she had no pain. We told the nursing home to stop the hospice because she couldn't breath because of the morphine and that night hospice killed her we believe with the overdose of morphine. People please listen it is all about the money and they want all the old people dead and get Hospice to do it.
I don't know what actually happened to your dear mother but I do sympathize with your loss. I will share that my mother also died within minutes of receiving her last injection of Dilaudid so I can understand why it may seem that was the cause, I was just grateful she was doped out of her mind and not suffering.
In the last days of her life, my mother was able to tell me whether or not she wanted her morphine and as it turned out she needed very little, only one or two doses over several days, to get her through rough patches.
Your mother's hospice team should ideally have been asking her first - are you sure they didn't? But in any case, the reason your mother was able to reassure you, the family, that she wasn't in any pain is that she was given morphine. Don't you agree that her being pain free was the most important thing?
I am so sorry that you are suffering this terrible anxiety about your mother's last days. Have you talked to anyone at the Nursing Home?
My mom was in a NH and fell forward - pulling her wheelchair behind her by the seat - and shattered her hip. Not her first fall but finally the one that made her bedfast. And bedfast she was for 18 l...o...n...g long months and went onto hospice at the NH. Each month getting tiny & tinier, it was kinda like watching a self mummification. And she was a petite lady to start with. For whatever reason she just flat wasn’t ready to die. Her morphine and other meds varied over time. If there was any way to up her morphine dose given by hospice so she could go to Her own “that eventuality”, I gladly would have signed off on this to happen. But that is absolutely not how hospice or health care works. It was your mom’s time & it’s hard for you to reconcile which is understandable.
Really grief counseling may be beneficial for you. Sorry for your loss
What was your mother’s diagnosis? Can you provide more details?
What was your understanding of what hospice services are for?
I understand you are grief stricken now. It’s very hard to lose your mother.
I suggest you give yourself some time to process her death. Get through her funeral, etc. In time you may feel differently about what occurred. Hopefully you will come to peace and more comfortable with your decision to elect for hospice care.
Don’t feel guilty about doing the best you can in an inevitable scenario. We all pass away one day. I don’t know your mother’s specific diagnosis. It does appear from your description that she was not suffering in the end.
As said, hospice has grief counseling. You may want to call them.
Where I live they think spouses can just put another spouse into hospice without them even knowing and without them even dying and forge there name.
I hope you will be gentle with yourself. Feel what you feel. Praying for you to have peace. Hugs
You are not the only one. I almost did too with my mother.
You no longer need a life expectancy of six months to get hospice.
My mother received it based on the number of times that she had been in the hospital for recurrent UTI's and on an overall decline in function; last year she could walk with a walker and now she is weaker and basically bedbound. But she is still in the MCI range, not yet vascular dementia, and no Alzheimer's.
She got another UTI and it was resistant to oral antibiotics. Hospice said to not take her to the hospital. When she hallucinated and got very confused they said it was because dementia was rapidly progressing, although she had cognitive symptoms with UTIs before, as so many elderly.
Hospice told me to give her morphine and ativan and haldol for her anxiety and refused to approve IV antibiotics, which she has needed before. I could not stand to see her suffer like that and took her to the ER anyway.
The hospice nurse showed up at the hospital to tell them that she was on hospice, at which point I took her off hospice. She was treated for the UTI and after 24 hours on IV antibiotics, her mind had cleared.
Hospice can be wonderful for those who are dying of terminal cancer or have advanced dementia. Even then I don't think they really are much help; they just say give them morphine and expect the family caregiver to do everything, including being alone with a dying parent.
I know some people have had good experiences with hospice, and the quality of hospice companies does vary, but if I had listened to them, my mother would be dead now from sepsis and dehydration.
It's important that others know the downsides as well as the positives of hospice. I think it's being oversold because it's a lot cheaper for Medicare to have them die at home than treat them in a hospital.
If you really believe this was murder, did you call in law enforcement?
Please note when it is our time to die, we will go on the same time table with or without hospice. It all depends on if you want to die in terrible pain, or die peacefully. Both my parents chose the peaceful route, and I am glad they did.
Too bad you didn't find this website earlier, otherwise we could have guided you with what to expect during this time of transiting for your mother. I just found it unusual that you posted here after-the-fact.
You feel how you feel. No one can take your place.
Lots of advice Lots of disagreement.
There is only two side to this.
Hospice kills the elderly
Or Hospice is wonderful.
Hospitals are pushing for discharges to hospice. Hospices are making money. Hospitals DO NOT want to discharge with a feeding tube. Hospices are AFRAID of feeding tubes.
It's just a neverending debate. Depends on which side of the fence you are on.
Basically everyone is right.
Hospices make money when their clients are alive, not when they're dead.
People REALLY REALLY need to understand what they're signing up FOR when they bring in Hospice. And they should also understand that they can FIRE hospice at ANY time and drag their loved one back to the hospital for more treatment, in spite of the fact that they've reached the end of their life.
Death is hard. Prolonging the end of life experience is even harder.
My condolences to the OP for the loss of your mom.
Medicare/Medicaid Hospice Reimbursement Cap & Hastening Death
Well, the reimbursement cap on what hospices receive for services is supposed to rein in the costs of hospice services, keeping the total government disbursement per patient down. The total cap on reimbursement is an average amount paid to the hospice agency for each patient and is roughly the daily routine home care rate times 180 (days) to equal what would be paid out in six months ... since the terminal patient is supposed to have six months or less to live. The main thing about the cap is that there is a limit to the total revenue a hospice takes in per patient over the course of the year. It's supposed to balance out somehow with reimbursements coming in for those patients who require fewer services allowing the hospice to use those funds to help pay for patients who require a lot of services. With a hospice that has integrity, the system works as planned, but as we have seen before, the reimbursement is not huge and a hospice will just break even if they provide all services that are supposed to be provided.
What happens in a rogue hospice is something else altogether. They see the reimbursement cap as an obstacle to their profit (or the revenue stream in a nonprofit hospice corporation). We've heard from families that tell us their loved one was in hospice for several months and then all of a sudden things changed. Years ago, if a patient was not declining, the hospice would discharge the patient as the government regulations require that the hospice be able to document "decline" in the patients health status. And in good hospices, the hospice will discharge a patient who is doing well and stabilizes. The rogue hospice often will not discharge; they often will end the life of the patient once their usefulness as a reason to bill for reimbursement ends (the cap is reached). When no more money is coming in for a particular patient, the rogue hospice sees the patient as a net-negative, and acts accordingly. New patients, who are readily available, start the flow of money again, often the same day.
Here's the link to pull up the documents
Hospice Payment Rates
The 'Hospice Rates' links contain the standardized Medicare payment amount for each hospice level of care.
The 'Wage Index' links contain the listing of Core Based Statistical Area (CBSA) codes and the corresponding wage index.
Hospice Payment Rates Calculator
FY 2020 (Oct 2019 – Sept 2020) Wage Index
IMPORTANT: FY 2020 (Oct 2019 – Sept 2020) Hospice Rates
However they can decrease services and visits. Therefore more money in their pocket.