Health affairs
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In a 5-4 vote, the Court upholds the constitutionality of the individual mandate but effectively gives states the option of expanding Medicaid.
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Biography Historical Article
Physician, researcher, and policy maker takes on HIV/AIDS.
From his days as a young physician in San Francisco to his current role as the US Global AIDS Coordinator, Eric Goosby has seen the damage done by HIV and has dedicated his career to lessening it.
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Emergency department use contributes to high end-of-life costs and is potentially burdensome for patients and family members. We examined emergency department use in the last months of life for patients age sixty-five or older who died while enrolled in a longitudinal study of older adults in the period 1992-2006. We found that 51 percent of the 4,158 [corrected] decedents visited the emergency department in the last month of life, and 75 percent in the last six months of life. ⋯ A total of 77 percent of the patients seen in the emergency department in the last month of life were admitted to the hospital, and 68 percent of those who were admitted died there. In contrast, patients who enrolled in hospice at least one month before death rarely visited the emergency department in the last month of life. Policies that encourage the preparation of patients and families for death and early enrollment in hospice may prevent emergency department visits at the end of life.