Several months ago I had an interesting experience.  It was my distinct pleasure to escort a distinguished critical care specialist on a tour of our palliative care unit.  This unit has been described by some as the Ritz Carlton of inpatient hospice care.

The physician was appropriately moved by the sum and substance of the unit.  There are balconies for each room, adequate sleeping space in the patient’s room for a family of four, a private kitchen and bath for the families, unlimited visiting hours, live plants, skylights and massage, pet, aroma, and music therapists roaming the halls to care for patient and family.

About half way through the tour, we informed him that the rooms were filled with patients suffering from all forms of advanced, terminal illnesses.  At that point he turned to me and very carefully and quietly lamented the fact that, under our current system of episodic care in this country, our hospital’s admit and try to stabilize; then later admit and try to stabilize again, on and on until death.  He stated his frustration with our current U.S. health system regarding this situation

He then said, specifically referring to the prestigious hospital where he was employed, “If we took a healthy organ from every patient currently being treated in our Critical Care Unit, we couldn’t come up with one survivable human being.”

Okay, here’s a novel, innovative thought.  What if we spent the money currently being squandered on non healing critical care for something good and right?  Currently, that money that is not leading to any better quality of life or additional longevity for the patients.  What if we spent that money on prenatal care, on childhood disease management of diabetes and obesity?  What if we spent that money on thousands of other youth related challenges and appropriate research?

We would be preserving the health care system in a manner that makes sense to us all.

Not unlike the generations before us, we must once again learn to accept death as a part of life.  We must embrace that fact that those 12 additional chemo treatments will not stop our cancer or improve our lives.  We must learn to embrace that transition time called death as a time for healing for families, for loved ones, for us all.

Let the inevitability of our mortality begin, once again, to steer us away from squandering our precious medical dollars, and give Hospice a chance.

Death with dignity, love and concern can be a beautiful transition and a true innovation that could emanate from the Baby Boom generation as we go on to do more and better things from the other side.