Caitlan Carroll of American Public Media’s Marketplace tries to explain why, even though “80 percent of patients say they don’t want to be hospitalized or given intensive care during the last phase of their lives,” so many people get intensive medical intervention at the end anyway.
In the end, Carroll finds that family and friends don’t want to lose a loved one, doctors don’t want to lose a patient, and doctors aren’t compensated for hospice and palliative care the same way they are for aggressive intervention.
Carroll’s report is the first installment of a two-part series funded by a California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowship.
