Hometown Hero Bud Hammes
“The Town Where Everyone Talks About Death.”
Every once in while you come across a headline that makes you stop and do a double take and this one was certainly one of those. Where everyone talks about death? When I saw that on the NPR website last week, I knew I had to take a closer look. It turns out that the article was about Gundersen Health System’s own Dr. Bernard “Bud” Hammes, our resident medical ethicist.
Did you know that 96% of the people in La Crosse have an “advance directive” or other instructions about what to do before their death? Compare this to only 30%-50% of adults nationwide.
In the NPR article, the interviewer writes how for most of his career, Bud would be called in when someone’s family member suffered a stroke, fell into a coma or was close to the end. Bud would have to sit the family and loved ones down and figure out what to do next. Always it was a hard and painful time for everyone.
Bud says, “the moral distress that these families were suffering was palpable. You could feel it in the room.” He figured out that in most of these cases, the person had been ill for years but no one had taken the time to plan ahead. So Bud went to work and working with health professionals from Gundersen Health System and Mayo Clinic Health System: Franciscan Health Care the created a program called “Respecting Choices.”
Using this newly created program they began training a corps of nurses to work with patients and their families ahead of time to get them used to the idea of filling out one of these advanced directives. They asked questions like:
“If you reach a point where treatments will extend your life by a few months and side effects are pretty serious, would you want doctors to stop, or continue to do all that could be done?”
It got people thinking. A lot of them realized that they wanted doctors to stop. A lot more realized that it would be less expensive than continuing treatment. Jeff Thompson, the CEO of Gundersen, told NPR that “it turns out that if you allow patients to choose and direct their care, then often they choose a course that is much less expensive.”
Of course, reducing costs is not the real goal of this project. For Bud, it is all about helping patients and their families. And Gundersen shares this belief. When asked about the expenses to helping patients fill out living wills, Bud said back in 2009 “We just build it into the overhead of the organization. We believe it’s part of good patient care. We believe that our patients deserve to have an opportunity at least to have these conversations. People are very thoughtful when you help them reflect. They typically don’t want medical treatment to create suffering when there is no clear benefit.”
And this isn’t the first time that Bud and Gundersen have been recognized by the news media for their important work. Back in 2009, NPR ran another article called “Why This Wisconsin City Is The Best Place To Die.” Talk about a headline that would make you do a double take.
Bud, who has a Ph.D, became a clinical ethicist based on his education and his experience with his new role at Gundersen. He says when they started the program, there was not that much resistance. Sure some people were not terribly interested in or even ready to answer these sorts of questions. That is why they have built in the chance to ask people multiple times to start thinking about it before they take the next step to develop a plan. In terms of getting people to make these plans, he says “I think in La Crosse we have made the point that this is important.” People understand that having a plan not only helps them but takes a tremendous burden off their family.”
If you are interested in planning ahead for health care decisions should you become incapable or just have questions about how to plan ahead, just contact Gundersen Health System or Mayo Clinic Health System: Franciscan Healthcare and ask about the Respecting Choices program. You can also email Britt Welnetz at blwelnet@gundersenhealth.org.
I am always excited to see someone from the Coulee Region making national news. What is even more exciting is to see La Crosse once again leading the way in medical advancement. Because of Bud’s thinking, La Crosse is becoming a nationwide model for hospitals and doctors who want to improve the care of those at the end of life. Bud is even putting off retirement to bring this program across the country.
So congratulations to you, Bud. Thank you for all the work you do and continue to be a Hometown Hero.
Hometown Hero is a regular feature put together by Rep. Steve Doyle (D-Onalaska). If you have any suggestions of a Hometown Hero, send a short description of why you think this person should be a Hometown Hero and contact information of both you and the nominee to rep.doyle@legis.wisconsin.gov.