Six doctors say the ‘care pathway’ practice could be being used in United Kingdom hospitals to ease pressure on resources. They say in the elderly natural death was more often free of pain and distress.
Hospitals may be withholding food and drink from elderly patients so they die quicker to cut costs and save on bad spaces
Hospitals may be withholding food and drink from elderly patients so they die quicker to cut costs and save on bad spaces, leading doctors have warned.
Thousands of terminally ill people are placed on a ‘care pathway’ every year to hasten the ends of their lives.
But in a letter to the Daily Telegraph, six doctors who specialise in elderly care said hospitals across the UK could be using the controversial practice to ease the pressure on resources.
The Liverpool Care Pathway, which got its name as it was developed at the Royal Liverpool Hospital in the 1990s, withholds fluids and drugs in a patient’s final days and is used with 29 per cent of hospital patients at the end of their lives.
The practise is backed by the Department of Health.
But the six experts told the Daily Telegraph that in the elderly, natural death was more often free of pain and distress.
The group warned that not all doctors were acquiring the correct consent from patients and are failing to ask about what they wanted while they were still able to decide.
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