Terminally ill nursing home patients face needless ER visits, hospital stays

Terminally ill nursing home patients face needless ER visits, hospital stays 
HealthDay; by Dennis Thompson; 7/28/25 
Terminally ill nursing home residents are being hounded to their graves with needless trips to the hospital, a new study says. About 80% of ER visits by terminally ill nursing home residents are potentially avoidable, researchers report in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association. Likewise, nearly one-third of hospitalizations among these residents were needless, the study says. Pneumonia, urinary tract infections (UTIs) and sepsis commonly resulted in needless trips to the hospital for terminally ill patients, but better health care and management at nursing homes could have kept these people out of the hospital, researchers argue.