The Acute Care for Elders - Essay Example

This figure translates to increasing expenditure on health care to the point of divesting budget from other social services. Statistics show that 10% to 12% of the total health care budget is spent on the aged (CSHRF, 2004). This population also accounts for 13% of the country's total hospitalization (Amador et al, 2007). This scenario brings us to the question of "how can the cost of dying to be reduced so that the aged and terminal patients opt for spending their last days in the care of any kind to reap the maximum benefit in producing a successful, healthy, productive and active aging".

One of the popular responses to the growing economic cost of dying is the removal of "aggressive life-sustaining interventions for dying patients" (Ezekiel J. Emanuel, 1994). The use of pre-need plans such as Medicare is already very much popular. In this paper, we ascertain as to what degree they are used by the patients. This forms an essential part of the economic cost of dying as pre-need plans are a form of savings for death. Different forms of patient care are also discussed in this paper such as the provision of relief and fulfillment of spiritual needs to the patient (Harrison and Ford, 2007).