Characteristics of Prison Hospice Programs in the United States

Hoffman, Heath; Dickinson, George E.

doi:10.1177/1049909110381884

Cited by 55 publications

(91 citation statements)

References 22 publications

(35 reference statements)

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“…The prison hospice movement is currently more proactive, better defined and perhaps more openly supported in the USA than in the UK. As previously noted in Hoffmann and Dickinson's study 8 surveying prison hospices in the United States, 69 prison hospice programmes operate at present across the country, many of which are guided by the GRACE Project (Guiding Responsive Action in Corrections at End of Life), set up as a working group to aid the implementation of hospices in North America. With the help of the GRACE Project prison hospices have grown exponentially over the last decade, with Ratcliff and Craig 12 noting that only 20 prison hospice sites were in existence in 1998.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Establishing hospice care for prison populations: An integrative review assessing the UK and USA perspective

2011

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Establishing hospice care for prison populations: An integrative review assessing the UK and USA perspective

2011

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“…The literature on end-of-life (EOL) care in prison settings has been growing over the past decade (e.g., Linder & Meyers, 2009;Hoffman & Dickinson, 2010;Stone, Papadopoulos, & Kelly, 2012), particularly as the prison hospice movement continues to expand in the United States. While prison hospice programs are one significant step in meeting the EOL care needs of offenders, ACP is another critical step, particularly for offenders who may feel they have a limited voice due to the policies and rules associated with incarceration.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Barriers Associated with the Implementation of an Advance Care Planning Program in a Prison Setting

Sanders

Stensland

Dohrmann

et al. 2014

Journal of Social Work in End-Of-Life & Palliative Care

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Advance care planning is considered a best practice within health care. However, the extent to which planning occurs within prison settings is unknown. Through the course of implementing an advance care planning (ACP) program for aging and dying offenders at a medical classification center, multiple barriers were identified that need to be addressed systemically to ensure the medical wishes of offenders were known and honored. This article will outline the barriers and the steps that were taken to create systems change to promote and sustain advance care planning.

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“…For instance, the community standard for end-of-life care is to offer patients hospice [15]; however, prison hospices are available only at 69 of 1,719 state correctional facilities [9,16], and they often require patients to move farther away from family or friends at a time when maintaining social connections is a core component of quality care. Prison hospice programs are costly, straining state allocations for correctional health services, which cannot be billed to Medicare and Medicaid [17].…”

Section: Compassionate Releasementioning

confidence: 99%

Compassionate Release Policy Reform: Physicians as Advocates for Human Dignity

Mitchell¹,

Williams

2017

AMA Journal of Ethics

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A rapidly aging correctional population has led to an increasing number of patients with serious progressive and terminal illnesses in correctional settings. "Compassionate release" describes a range of policies offering early release or parole to incarcerated patients with serious or debilitating illnesses. However, in many states that have compassionate release policies, few patients are actually granted release. We describe how the continued incarceration of patients with serious or debilitating illness can constitute a violation of human dignity if appropriate palliative care is unavailable. We argue that, given the importance in medical ethics of upholding dignity, physicians should advocate for the appropriate application and use of compassionate release. We describe several opportunities for physicians to take leadership on this issue. IntroductionIncarcerated patients are more likely to have severe or debilitating medical illnesses than the general population [1]. More than 4,000 people died in jails and state prisons annually from 2003-2011, with heart disease and cancer being major causes of death [2]. These illnesses disproportionately affect older patients, who make up an increasingly larger share of prison populations. From 1993 to 2013, the 55-and-older population in state prisons more than tripled, increasing from 3 percent to 10 percent [3]. "Compassionate release" policies have been designed to allow some of these patients to be released from prison or jail before sentence completion. However, few patients are actually granted compassionate release [4,5]. This article provides an overview of ethical principles used to justify compassionate release and explores how physicians can leverage their commitment to upholding ethical principles to advocate for more effective compassionate release policies. AMA Journal of Ethics, September 2017 855Compassionate Release For humanitarian, practical, and economic reasons, 47 states and the District of Columbia have some form of early release mechanism for seriously ill or disabled incarcerated patients [6][7][8]. "Compassionate release" is a broad term used to describe a range of these types of policies (including medical parole, emergency parole, and medical release). Most, if not all, share the requirement for a physician to determine medical eligibility for potential candidates, although medical eligibility differs by jurisdiction [9]. Nationwide, compassionate releases occur relatively infrequently. Out of 2,621 requests for compassionate release during a one-year span in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, only 85 (3.24 percent) were granted [10]. State prison systems are likely to have similar if not lower rates of release [11]. These low rates stem in large part from state and federal policies with restrictive medical and criminological eligibility criteria for release, including mandated short-term "terminal prognosis" and exclusion of nonterminal but debilitating conditions [9,11]. These policy barriers are compounded by administrative barriers t...

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Characteristics of Prison Hospice Programs in the United States

Cited by 55 publications

References 22 publications

Establishing hospice care for prison populations: An integrative review assessing the UK and USA perspective

Establishing hospice care for prison populations: An integrative review assessing the UK and USA perspective

Barriers Associated with the Implementation of an Advance Care Planning Program in a Prison Setting

Compassionate Release Policy Reform: Physicians as Advocates for Human Dignity

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