Ezekiel Emanuel on end-of-life choices

Hospice
Joe Takach kisses Lillian Landry in this Oct. 30, 2009 file photo, as Landry spends her last days in the hospice wing of an Oakland Park, Fla., hospital. She made her end-of-life decisions, listing how she wanted to spend her last time and how she wanted to be buried.
J PAT CARTER/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act, will join The Daily Circuit Monday, Jan. 14 to share his thoughts on planning end-of-life care for yourself and loved ones.

Dr. Rebecca Sudore, a geriatrician at the University of California, San Francisco, created Prepare, a program to help people through the process of discussing advanced care planning.

"There's a world of difference between patients and family members who've had time to prepare and have those discussions, and those who haven't, who are more 'deer in the headlights,'" Sudore said in The New York Times.

Emanuel has been advocating a shared decision-making policy where family members and physicians collaborate to figure out what form of care is best for each patient. He is also pushing for more thoughtful and comprehensive end-of-life discussions. Doctors need more training when it comes to talking about end-of-life choices, pain management, and setting expectations, he said.

READ MORE ABOUT EMANUEL, AMERICAN HEALTH CARE:

Prepare for your care

Where the oldest die now (New York Times)

Emanuel the doctor helping Obama deliver health care overhaul (Bloomberg)

The Brothers Emanuel (New York Times magazine)

Better, if not cheaper, care (New York Times)

Shared decision making to improve care and reduce costs (The New England Journal of Medicine)

A better way to raise the eligibility age for retirement benefits (New York Times)