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In February 2023, former President Jimmy Carter’s family announced that he was entering hospice care. Like most Americans, we expected the news of his passing to be reported a day or two later. A year-and-a-half after entering hospice, Carter and his family celebrated his 100th birthday with a star-studded celebration on Sept. 19 at the Carter Center in Atlanta. The “Jimmy Carter 100” mimicked the political celebrations from his 1976 campaign days to celebrate the music-loving, longest-living president.
When does a person decide to enter hospice care? The best time to make end-of-life plans is when you are healthy and cognitively sound, well before hospice services are needed. Several tools are available to help design a strategy and consider how you want to face the final season of your life.
While it’s important not to put off these discussions, topics like hospice and planning your medical directives are not conversations that are easy to initiate with loved ones.
One change that would make this conversation more approachable would be to consider the quality of life desired for the patient and how the hospice team can provide emotional and spiritual care for the patient, caregiver and family for weeks or months. Instead of viewing hospice care as only for the final days or hours of life, reframe your thinking around this extended care period. The hospice benefit covered by Medicare or Medicaid is for anyone who meets the medical criteria, not special treatment for a former president and his family.
In 2022, Arkansans ranked 33rd in the nation for hospice utilization at 45.7%, as reported in the National Hospice & Palliative Care Organization’s annual report. What are the reasons that more Arkansans are not choosing hospice care? Lack of planning, lack of knowledge about available services, denial or fear of the need.
We want to live life to the fullest, whatever that looks like each season. Some of the hospice services for the patient can include managing pain and other symptoms; assisting the patient and family with emotional, psychosocial and spiritual aspects of dying; providing medications and medical equipment; instructing the family on how to care for the patient; providing grief support and counseling; making short-term care available when pain or symptoms become too challenging to manage at home or the caregiver needs respite time; and delivering special services like speech and physical therapy where needed.
Hospice care is an interdisciplinary approach to living life to the fullest and optimizing the quality of life among people with life-limiting illnesses. Hospice care can and should be viewed as whole-person, end-of-life care and a final gift to the patient’s loved ones. Thank you, President Carter, who, in his final season, is leaving a legacy of raising awareness for hospice care. Happy 100th birthday!
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