This Was Not the Good Death We Were Promised - The New York Times

This family did everything right.  They had honest conversations and planned for palliative care to make the dying man as comfortable as possible.  But it turned out that the promises of care were contingent on staff availability.

"[A]t the very end, confronted by a sudden deterioration in my father’s condition, hospice did not fulfill its promise to my family — not for lack of good intentions but for lack of staff and foresight....At the end of life, things can fall apart quickly, and neither medical specialist nor hospice worker can guarantee a painless exit. But we were told a palliative expert would be at my father’s bedside if he needed it. We were not told this was conditional on staffing levels....Kaiser Health News discovered there had been 3,200 complaints against hospice agencies across the country in the past five years. Few led to any recourse. In a Medicare-sponsored survey, fewer than 80 percent of people reported “getting timely care” from hospice providers, and only 75 percent reported “getting help for symptoms."

This Was Not the Good Death We Were Promised - The New York Times