by: Alex Smith @AlexSmithMD Wouldn’t it be great if we came up with a standardized approach to caring for hospitalized patients in the last two days of life? Think of it. Experts in hospice and palliative care could come to consensus on the best palliative care pathway for hospitalized patients nearing the end of life. Standardized assessment of distressing symptoms, the use of opioids, and other common medications used near the end of life. We could incentivize use of pathway, and improve care across the board. We should do it, right? Well in the UK, they did it. It was widely adopted in the UK and throughout Europe. And now they’re retracting it. The Liverpool Care Pathway was just that – an intervention designed to export the best of hospice and palliative medicine to non-palliative care clinicians caring for hospitalized patients in the UK. And now the government is scrapping it. How did this happen? First, two critical must reads for more details. Stories in