To underscore this reality, here’s a partial transcript of another patient-counselor conversation. In this case, the patient gave permission for a reporter to hear and broadcast his side of the conversation:
"I have a malignant brain tumor. I've been fighting it for over a year now," the man tells Ariana Noto. "The meds make me dizzy and when I'm that dizzy I can't drive, I'm trapped in the house, I'm going nuts."
"That's a lot. I'm so sorry to hear that," she responds.
Over the course of minutes the conversation goes from one between complete strangers to one of raw intimacy. The man confides information he may not have told anyone else. His meds make it difficult to function and do simple things like sitting around a table with friends, having a beer.
The two talk about what whether he understands about the effectiveness of his medicine. He's not sure. They go over what he might want to clarify with his doctor.
"... You can control how much treatment you want and how you want symptoms to be managed as it does get worse," Noto says.
"But I can't talk that way with my son in the room," he tells her.
CEO Daitz says jumpstarting unbiased, honest discussions around end-of life care, early on, could improve the quality of life for patients with advanced illnesses and their families in those final weeks and months together.
Such topics are still sensitive, but Daitz says insurers and patients are more open to addressing this now. The effort to reimburse doctors for these end of life conversations recently made a comeback in Congress.
That's the thinking behind the company, formed in 2008, and a wave of other similar initiatives. It wasn't popular at first, says Daitz, recalling the uproar over unsuccessful attempts to add to the health law payments to doctors for advanced-planning and end-of-life conversations and false rumors of 'death panels.'
"No one ever accused me of having good timing," he says.
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