Annals of Government Medicine

by Scott Johnson in Annals of Government Medicine

The Daily Mail reports on a worthy addition to our annals series:

Sick children are being discharged from NHS hospitals to die at home or in hospices on controversial “death pathways.”
Until now, end of life regime the Liverpool Care Pathway was thought to have involved only elderly and terminally-ill adults.
But the Mail can reveal the practice of withdrawing food and fluid by tube is being used on young patients as well as severely disabled newborn babies.
One doctor has admitted starving and dehydrating ten babies to death in the neonatal unit of one hospital alone.
Writing in a leading medical journal, the physician revealed the process can take an average of ten days during which a baby becomes “smaller and shrunken.”
The LCP – on which 130,000 elderly and terminally-ill adult patients die each year – is now the subject of an independent inquiry ordered by ministers.
The investigation, which will include child patients, will look at whether cash payments to hospitals to hit death pathway targets have influenced doctors’ decisions.
Medical critics of the LCP insist it is impossible to say when a patient will die and as a result the LCP death becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. They say it is a form of euthanasia, used to clear hospital beds and save the NHS money.

You can see why the concept of “death pathways” and “death pathway targets” is handy in a government-run system of health care. We have a lot to learn.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/11/annals-of-government-medicine-18.php