Monday, 22 October 2012

NHS encourages frail patients to die at home rather than seek life ...

The NHS are requesting GPs draw up ?Death Lists? of frail patients who are to be encouraged to die at home rather than seek life-saving treatment at hospital, with the objective of saving the government ?1.35 billion a year.

The Liberal Democrat Care Minister Norman Lamb has unveiled the NHS Death List ?tool kit? that GPs and Social Workers will use to identify patients to be encouraged to die. ?The ?toolkit? makes clear that a quarter of all hospital beds are occupied by dying people and said that? four in ten have no medical need to be there. ?It goes on to state that if each had one less emergency admission into hospital in their last weeks and? months, that would save the NHS ?1.35billion a year.

The ?tool kit? tells doctors: ?After several years of falling, the death rate is about to increase again as the baby boomers reach old age. This is a bad situation, which is going to get worse unless we act now.?

The government?s euthanasia plan is being disguised under the euphemism ?End of Life Care Registers? which claim to have patients best interests at heart, so they can die in comfort in their homes.

GPs have been asked to select one in every 100 of their patients likely to die over the next 12 months?to go on a ?Death list?. The GPs will not tell their patients or families that they have been selected for the ?Death List? but instead will encourage them to make Living Wills that request that nutrition and hydration are withdrawn if they become incapacitated and that they are not?resuscitated.

The NHS is distributing Death ?tool kits? not only to GPs but also to?health and social workers, which provide guidance on how to select patients for the ?Death Lists.?

It states that ?approximately? 1 per cent of people on a GP?s list [of all patients] will die each year ? this equates to an average of 20 deaths a year. Around 70 per cent to 80 per cent of all deaths are likely to benefit from planned end-of-life care.?

It said: ?Have your local practices identified the 1 per cent of their practice population who may be likely to die in the next year??

Doctors are told to pick out such patients during routine consultations that show? ?indicators of frailty and deterioration? and are told that? ?older people are a priority? to consider?.

They are also told to use feedback from district nurses or hospital consultants, while patients in care homes should be ?actively considered for your register?, the advice states.

Information for GPs on what happens to such patients said they would be ?less likely to be subject to treatments of limited clinical value?.
The Daily Mail reports:

Thousands of patients have already been placed on ?death registers? which single them out to be allowed to die in comfort rather than be given life-saving treatment in hospital, it emerged last night.

Nearly 3,000 doctors have promised to draw up a list of patients they believe are likely to die within a year, Department of Health figures showed yesterday.

Some medical professionals went public with their worries yesterday following the Daily Mail?s disclosure of the NHS request to doctors to put one in every 100 of their patients on death lists.

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Dr Peter Saunders, of the Christian Medical Fellowship, warned about the risks of drawing up ?quotas? for the dying.

?We all know that doctors? estimates of patients? lifespans can be sometimes accurate but sometimes wildly inaccurate,? he said.

?A skilled doctor can in the great majority of cases assess when a patient is within a few hours or days of death. However, once we start to talk about weeks or months we know that we can often be right, but equally very badly wrong.?
NHS plans to creat ?Death Lists? emerged at the same time that the government rejected calls from the Catholic Church to review the misuse of the Liverpool Care Pathway:

The Archbishop of Southwark wrote to the Secretary of State for Health last month, urging him to launch a ?thorough and urgent investigation? into the controversial care pathway.

In a letter dated September 27, Archbishop Peter Smith expressed concern to the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt about the growing controversy surrounding the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP).

He wrote: ?It does seem to me that a thorough and urgent investigation needs to take place, examining the evidence on which the criticisms that have been made of the LCP rest, so that conclusions can be reached as to whether any corrective action is needed.?

Archbishop Smith added: ?If the allegations that are being made can be substantiated, there is serious cause for concern either that the LCP is in some way structurally unsound and needs to be modified or that some doctors and nurses are failing to implement the guidelines as intended.

?Equally, if the allegations are without substance, dying patients and their loved ones are at risk of being caused needless anxiety as a result of which they may well seek to avoid treatment and care from which they would benefit.?

The LCP, which is used by hospitals as a framework to guide medical care of the dying, faced fresh criticism this week after it was reported that an 85-year-old woman had died alone at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital because medics allegedly did not consult her family before placing her on the pathway.

According to reports, Olive Goom died without family or friends as hospital staff had assured relatives that there was no urgent need to visit, although they had already removed her tubes, which provided food and fluid.

Dr Anthony Cole, the Catholic chairman of the Medical Ethics Alliance, said: ?The LCP is inherently hazardous and it is also unnecessary. Excellent end of life care can be delivered without referring to the LCP framework. It is time for an inquiry by the Department of Health into how the LCP is actually operating.?

But a spokeswoman for the Department of Health told The Catholic Herald that it would not be launching an official inquiry into the LCP.

She said: ?We would expect all trusts to investigate any reports of abuse or clinical failure and to act accordingly.

?The Liverpool Care Pathway is supported by leading clinicians and charities such as Marie Curie and is NICE [National Institute for Clinical Excellence] recommended. We continue to fully support its proper use as a way of managing a patient?s care with dignity and respect in their last days.?

Jim Dobbin, a Catholic MP and co-chair of the Dying Well All Party Parliamentary Group, which opposes euthanasia and promotes palliative care, has expressed the group?s support for an inquiry.

Protect the Pope comment: With the unquestioned use of the Liverpool Care Pathway and GPs creating ?Death Lists? the government is putting plans in place to create a euthanasia conveyor belt for the Baby Boomer generation.

The Care Minister?s toolkit makes it clear that the NHS sees the ageing Baby Boomers as a ?bad situation, which is going to get worse unless we act now.? Acting now means persuading them, without their knowledge of the government?s plans, that they decline life-saving treatment in favour of dying in comfort at home on the Liverpool Care Pathway, which will lead to hydration and nutrition being withdrawn if health care professionals and social workers decide that they are dying. If they become agitated, then they will be heavily sedated to ease their ?passing?.

The objective of saving the NHS ?1.35 billion a year is being dressed up as being in the best interests of frail patients. Being told that you?re going to die soon and you have a choice of dying at home surrounded by loved ones or in hospital where you?ll be a burden on the State, what do you think old people will choose?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2219351/Three-THOUSAND-doctors-putting-patients-death-lists-single-allowed-die.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2218790/Put-1-100-patients-death-list-GPs-told-Frailest-asked-choose-end-life-care.html

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2012/10/18/state-rejects-archbishops-call-for-review-of-care-pathway/

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Source: http://protectthepope.com/?p=5879

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