Bringing the Hospital Home: Ethical and Social Implications of High-Tech Home Care

High-technology medical devices--for treatments such as kidney dialysis, total parenteral nutrition, the infusion of antibiotics, and respiratory ventilation--are making it possible for people with chronically acute conditions to live longer. And with the current fiscal pressures to reduce the length of hospital stays, these people are being discharged to their homes, assisted by portable life-support systems. The introduction of high-tech devices into the home setting, however, poses a new set of ethical and social challenges.

Bringing the Hospital Home was conceived to examine these issues and to spur public discussion of them. The book brings together scholars, clinicians, and advocates from a variety of fields to address topics that include the natures and uses of the technologies, the impact of high-tech home care on patients and families, policy questions that influence program design, health economics, and death and dying in the home.