Medical Advocates Can Help Guide Patients On Difficult Care Choices

(By – Barbara Sadick, Kaiser Health News)

Stan and XuXia Smith learned from an ultrasound midway through the pregnancy that their son would be born with an often-fatal congenital heart defect. In the first week of the baby’s life, they got more bad news: Some major organs were incorrectly formed and mislocated inside Travis’s tiny body. They faced a long journey.

“I felt like I’d been hit by a tidal wave. I couldn’t process the information I was being given fast enough, and I knew we’d need someone to help us translate and evaluate the enormous amount of information we were being bombarded with,” Stan Smith said. Read more…

Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit national health policy news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

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