Covenant Health recently hosted a speaker, who shared information about care through your whole life.
Dr. Ira Byock is the Chief Medical Officer for the institute for Human Caring. He did two sessions at Covenant recently, one for the general public and one for healthcare professionals. In both, he was talking about care through your whole life.
“We Americans are getting the best treatments for our cancer, heart failure, liver problems, whatever diseases threaten our lives, but we know common patterns of practice in America have people treated far longer than people in other countries, and often we’re at high-risk at the end of our lives, of ending up in the hospital or the intensive care unit, receiving treatments that are not beneficial but highly burdensome to ourselves and frankly to our families,” Dr. Byock said.
“Through Covenant Health, promote a new model of caring, that gives people the best evidence based treatment for their disease, but insures that what we’re treating, how we’re treating them, is consistent with their personal wishes, with their values, preferences, and priorities,” he added.
He said it’s important to have a conversation about care.
“This work starts with a conversation, within their family, about what matters most when you or someone you love is coming to the later stages of his or her life, who they want to speak for them, who they trust to convey their wishes, and what constitutes quality,” he said.
He also added this conversation could start even fairly early on in life.
“It’s just part of good healthcare for all of us,” Dr. Byock said. “And yes, it starts really having these conversations and making it formal to have someone you trust speak for you should start when you become 18 for every adult and certainly when you get older and become my age, of Medicare age, this is absolutely part of good health care.”
He also said health care is personal, meaning one option may not work for everyone.
“The way to find out the best care for a given individual is to have a conversation about what matters to them,” he said.
