Bringing the Hospital Home

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 stay, these people are being discharged to their homes, assisted by portable life-support systems. But the introduction of high-tech devices into the home setting - the fastest growing sector of the health care economy - poses a new set of ethical and social challenges. This book examines the nature and implications of care in areas such as paediatrics, geriatrics, AIDS and cancer. It brings together scholars, clinicians and advocates from a variety of fields to address topics that include the uses of the technologies, the impact of high-tech home care on patients and families, and policy questions bearing on programme design, rationing and access to care, economics, and death and dying in the home.