Social forces have continually framed how hospitals perceive their role in care of the dying. Hospitals were originally conceived as places of hospitality and spiritual care, but by the 18th century illness was an opponent, conquered through science. Medicalization transformed hospitals to places of physical cure and scientific prowess. Death was an institutional liability. Equipped with new technologies, increased public demand, and the establishment of Medicare in 1965, modern hospitals became the most likely place for Americans to die—increasing after the 1940s and spiking in the 1990s. Medicare’s 1983 hospice benefit began to reverse this trend. Palliative care has more recently proliferated, suggesting an institutional shift of alignment with traditional functions of care toward those facing death.
MillerTS.The birth of the hospital in the Byzantine Empire. Henry E Sigerist Suppl Bull Hist Med. 1985;(10):1–288.
3.
AmundsenD. Philanthropy in medicine. In: ShelpE, ed. Beneficence and Health Care. Dordrecht, Netherland: Reidel; 1982:1–31.
4.
AmundsenDW. The physician’s obligation to prolong life: a medical duty without classical roots. Hastings Cent Rep. 1978;8(4):23–30.
5.
SilvasA. The Asketikon of St Basil the Great. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; 2005.
6.
FerngrenGB. Medicine & Health Care in Early Christianity. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press; 2009.
7.
FerngrenGB. Early Christianity as a religion of healing. Bull Hist Med. 1992;66(1):1–15.
8.
VerheyA. The Christian Art of Dying: Learning from Jesus. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub; 2011.
9.
VogtCP. Patience, Compassion, Hope, and the Christian Art of Dying Well. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers; 2004.
10.
AmundsenDW. The Medieval Catholic Tradition. In: NumbersRLAmundsenDarrel W, eds. Caring and Curing. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins Press; 1986:65–107.
11.
PaxtonFS. Christianizing Death: The Creation of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press; 1990.
12.
ArièsP. The Hour of Our Death. 1st American ed. New York, NY: Knopf; 1981.
13.
BalboniMJBalboniTA. Medicine and spirituality in historical perspective. In: John PeteetMDA, ed. The Soul of Medicine: Spirituality and World View in Clincial Practice. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press; 2011:3–22.
14.
PaxtonFS. Anointing the sick and dying in Christian antiquity and the early medieval West. In: CampbellSHallBKlausnerD, eds. Health, Disease and Healing in Medieval Culture. New York, NY: St Martin’s Press; 1992:93–102.
15.
ParkKHendersonJ.The first hospital among Christians: the Ospedale di Santa Maria Nuova in early sixteenth-century Florence. Medical History. London; 1991(35):183.
16.
GrellO. The Protestant imperative of Christian care and neighborly love. In: GrellOCunninghamA, eds. Health Care and Poor Relief in Protestant Europe 1500-1700. London, UK: Routledge; 1997:43–65.
17.
OrmeN, Webster MEG. The English Hospital 1070-1570. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; 1995.
18.
McKennyGP. To Relieve the Human Condition: Bioethics, Technology, and the Body. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press; 1997.
19.
GregoryJ.Case of Adam C. In: Cases of Patients Under the Care of James Gregory MD. Edinburgh, 1781-82. MSS Collection, Royal Coll Phys Edinburgh.
20.
RisseGB. Hospital Life in Enlightenment Scotland: Care and Teaching at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press; 1986.
21.
BonnerTN. Becoming a Physician: Medical Education in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States, 1750-1945. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; 1995.
22.
CullenW.Clinical Lectures. Edinburgh1772-73, MSS Collection, Royal Coll Phys Edinburgh.
23.
RosenbergCE. The Care of Strangers: The Rise of America's Hospital System. New York, NY: Basic Books; 1987.
24.
BurnhamJC. American medicine’s golden age: what happened to it?Science. 1982;215(4539):1474–1479.
25.
AbelEK.‘In the last stages of irremediable disease’: Amercian hospitals and dying patients before World War II. Bull Hist Med. 2011;85(1):29–56.
26.
BeckerE. The Denial of Death. New York, NY: Free Press; 1973.
27.
FulopM. The teaching hospital’s modern deathbed ritual. N Engl J Med. 1985;312(2):125–126.
28.
ImberJB. Trusting Doctors: The Decline of Moral Authority in American Medicine. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; 2008.
29.
StarrP. The Social Transformation of American Medicine. New York, NY: Basic Books; 1982.
30.
RisseGB. Mending Bodies, Saving Souls: A History of Hospitals. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; 1999.
31.
StevensR. In Sickness and in Wealth: American Hospitals in the Twentieth Century. New York, NY: Basic Books; 1989.
32.
FloryJYinongYXGurolILevinskyNAshAEmanuelE.Place of death: U.S. trends since 1980. Health Aff (Millwood). 2004;23(3):194–200.
33.
BrockDBFoleyDJ. Demography and epidemiology of dying in the U.S. with emphasis on deaths of older persons. Hosp J. 1998;13 (1-2):49–60.
34.
FieldMJCasselCK, eds. Approaching Death: Improving Care at the End of Life. The National Academies Press; 1997. Committee on Care at the End of Life Institute of Medicine. Washington DC: USA.
35.
WeitzenSTenoJMFennellMMorV. Factors associated with site of death: a national study of where people die. Med Care. 2003;41(2):323–335.
36.
Callahan D. Death: “the distinguished thing”. Hastings Cent Rep. 2005;Spec No:S5-S8.
37.
IllichI. Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health. New ed. Harmondsworth; New York, NY: Penguin; 1977.
38.
FoucaultM. The Birth of the Clinic; An Archaeology of Medical Perception. 1st American ed. New York, NY: Pantheon Books; 1973.
39.
Kübler-RossE. On Death and Dying. New York, NY: Macmillan; 1969.
40.
KnauftENielsenELEngelbergRAPatrickDLCurtisJR. Barriers and facilitators to end-of-life care communication for patients with. Chest. 2005;127(6):2188–2196.
41.
InvestigatorsTSP. Acontrolled trial to improve care for seriously ill hospitalized patients: The study to understand prognoses and preferences for outcomes and risks of treatments (SUPPORT). JAMA. 1995;274(20):1591–1598.
42.
CassellEJ. The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine. 2nd ed. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press; 2004.
43.
FultonROwenG. Death in contemporary American society. In: FultonRBendiksenR, eds. Death and Identity. 3rd ed. Philadelphia, PA: Charles; 1994.
44.
GoudsmitJ. Viral Sex: The Nature of AIDS. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; 1997.
45.
ByockI. Dying Well: The Prospect for Growth at the End of Life. New York, NY: Riverhead Books; 1997.
46.
FoxD. AIDS and the American health polity: the history and prospects of a crisis of authority. In: FeeEFoxDM, eds. AIDS. The Burdens of History. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press; 1988:316–343.
47.
ClemensKEKlaschikE. The History of hospice. In: WalshD, ed. Palliative Medicine. Philadephia, PA: Saunders; 2009:18–23.
48.
BrueraERussellNSweeneyCFischMPalmerJL. Place of death and its predictors for local patients registered at a comprehensive cancer center. J Clin Oncol. 2002;20(8):2127–2133.
49.
LutzS. The history of hospice and palliative care. Curr Probl Cancer. 2011;35(6):304–309.
GoodmanDEstyAFisherESChangC. Trends and Variation in End-of-Life Care for Medicare Beneficiaries with Severe Chronic Illness. A Report of the Dartmouth Atlas Project. 2011. Accessed January 5, 2012.
52.
CallahanD. Taming the Beloved Beast: How Medical Technology Costs are Destroying our Health Care System. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; 2009.
53.
EmanuelEJFuchsVR. The perfect storm of overutilization. JAMA. 2008;299(23):2789–2791.
54.
MeierDE. Increased access to palliative care and hospice services: opportunities to improve value in health care. Milbank Q. 2011;89(3):343–380.
55.
MorrisonRSDietrichJLadwigS. Palliative care consultation teams cut hospital costs for Medicaid beneficiaries. Health Aff (Millwood). 2011;30(3):454–463.
56.
ClarkD. From margins to centre: a review of the history of palliative care in cancer. Lancet Oncol. 2007;8(5):430–438.
57.
MorrisonRSAugustinRSouvannaPMeierDE. America's care of serious illness: a state-by-state report card on access to palliative care in our nation's hospitals. J Palliat Med. 2011;14(10):1094–1096.
58.
HauserJSileoMAranetaN. Navigation and palliative care. Cancer. 2011;117(15 suppl):3585–3591.
59.
FerrisFDBrueraEChernyN. Palliative cancer care a decade later: accomplishments, the need, next steps—from the American Society of Clinical Oncology. J Clin Oncol. 2009;27(18):3052–3058.
MartensenRL. A Life Worth Living: A Doctor’s Reflections on Illness in a High-tech Era. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus Giroux; 2009.
62.
GrudzenCRRichardsonLDHopperSSOrtizJMWhangCMorrisonRS. Does palliative care have a future in the emergency department? Discussions with attending emergency physicians. J Pain Symptom Manage. 2012;43(1):1–9.
63.
MosenthalACWeissmanDECurtisJR. Integrating palliative care in the surgical and trauma intensive care unit: a report from the Improving Palliative Care in the Intensive Care Unit (IPAL-ICU) Project Advisory Board and the Center to Advance Palliative Care. Crit Care Med. 2012;40(4):1199–1206.
64.
BrueraEHuiD. Integrating supportive and palliative care in the trajectory of cancer: establishing goals and models of care. J Clin Oncol. 2010;28(25):4013–4017.
