In the event of a pandemic, more people choose to die at home

MISSION, Kan. (AP) – Mortuary owner Brian Simmons has made more and more home trips to pick up bodies for cremation and embalming since the pandemic struck.

With the devastating COVID-19 in communities across Missouri, its two-person teams regularly arrive at homes in the Springfield area and remove the bodies of people who have decided to die at home rather than spending their final days in a retirement home or hospital where family visits were prohibited. during the pandemic.

He understands all too well why people choose to die at home: His own 49-year-old daughter succumbed to coronavirus just before Christmas at a Springfield hospital, where the family received only phone updates as his condition was deteriorating.

“The parting part is really rough, rough,” Simmons said. “My daughter went to the hospital and we saw her once through the glass when they put her on a ventilator, and then we never saw her again until after she died.

Across the country, terminally ill patients – both with COVID-19 and other illnesses – are making similar decisions and dying at home rather than face the terrifying scenario of saying goodbye to loved ones behind a window or during video calls.

“What we’re seeing with COVID is definitely that patients want to stay home,” said Judi Lund Person, vice president of regulatory compliance at the National Hospice Palliative Care Organization. “They don’t want to go to the hospital. They don’t want to go to a nursing home.

National palliative care organizations report that facilities are recording double-digit percentages of increases in the number of patients cared for at home.

The phenomenon occurred at the Carroll Hospice in Westminster, Md., Which has seen a 30% to 40% spike in demand for home care, said CEO Regina Bodnar. She said avoiding nursing homes and coronavirus risks was the main factor behind the increase.

Lisa Kossoudji, who supervises nurses at the Dayton hospice in Ohio, removed her own mother, now 95, from the assisted living facility and brought her home to live with her after the pandemic . She had gone weeks without seeing her mother and feared her condition would deteriorate because she was confined to her room as the facility sought to limit the potential for the virus to spread.

Her mother, who has a disease that causes thickening and hardening of the artery walls in her brain, is now receiving palliative care services. Kossoudji sees the families she serves making similar choices.

“A lot of people bring home people who physically have a lot of physical issues, be it a feeding tube or a trachea, things an everyday layman would look at and say, ‘Oh my God. , I can’t do that, ”she said. “But yet they are ready to take them home because we want to be able to be with them and see them.”

Before the pandemic, hospice workers treated patients who died from heart disease, cancer, dementia and other terminal illnesses in long-term care facilities and, to a lesser extent, at home. Many families have been reluctant to follow the path of dying at home due to the many logistical challenges, including work schedules and complex medical needs.

But the pandemic has changed things. People were suddenly working from home and had more time, and they were more comfortable with palliative care at home knowing the alternative with the lack of visits to retirement homes.

“What happened with COVID was everything was on steroids so to speak. It all happened so quickly that suddenly family members were ready to take care of their loved ones at home, ”said Carole Fisher, President of the National Partnership for Healthcare Innovation and the hospices. “Everything accelerated.”

“I have heard families say, ‘I can take care of my elderly mother now very differently than before because I work from home,” she added. “And so there is more unity in the family unit because of COVID.”

But dying at home is not for everyone. Caring for the needs of a critically ill parent can mean sleepless nights and added stress as the pandemic rages on.

Karen Rubel recalled that she didn’t want to take her own 81-year-old mother to the hospital when she had a stroke in September and then went to great lengths to get her home the most early as possible.

She is president and CEO of Nathan Adelson Hospice in Las Vegas, which has designated one of its inpatient facilities for COVID-19 patients.

“I come from where people are coming from,” she said. “They are afraid.”