More Americans are dying at home rather than in hospitals
MARILYNN MARCHIONE
AP Chief Medical Writer
For the first time since the early 1900s, more Americans are dying at home rather than in hospitals, a trend that reflects more hospice care and progress toward the kind of end that most people say they want.
Deaths in nursing homes also have declined, according to Wednesday's report in the New England Journal of Medicine.
"It's a good thing. Death has become overly medicalized over the last century" and this shows a turn away from that, said the lead author, Dr. Haider Warraich of the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System.
Betsy McNair, a tour guide who now lives in Mexico, is proud of the ending she helped give her father. Robert McNair was 83 when he died at home in Belle Haven, Virginia, in 2009, six weeks after learning he had lung