My emotions are running high after learning about CommonSpirit Mercy Hospital discontinuing their palliative care program. According to the Center to Advance Palliative Care, palliative care “is based on the needs of the patient, not on the patient’s diagnosis … and its goal is to improve quality of life for both the patient and the family.”
My mother moved here in 2020 with numerous health issues, and I enrolled her in palliative care as I knew that at some point she would need to transition to hospice. Her palliative care nurse practitioner, Jen, visited my mother monthly in her apartment and became a friend while monitoring her health, taking vitals and prescribing medications as needed. When my mother received a terminal diagnosis last year, Jen, along with hospice staff members, helped my mother transition to hospice.
Palliative care works and enables people to stay in their homes for as long as they can. Potential and past patients will now have to go to the ER or their personal PCPs for treatment. Recently, the last palliative care nurse had to discharge 200 patients. Unbelievable!
In addition, the firing of the palliative care/hospice medical director, Anne Rossignol, MD, has been a huge loss in the quest for higher profits.
It’s an unfortunate fact that Medicare reimbursement rates are extremely low; however, I urge the higher-ups at CommonSpirit to rethink the palliative care program and provide the necessary resources needed to get it up and running again.
Stacey Ebel
Durango