Brand New Futile Care Fellowship Created

BOARDMAN, OH – St. Margaret Medical Center released news Thursday that a new cutting-edge fellowship training program would start.

Dr. Peg Trachenline couldn’t hide her excitement as she announced the creation of a brand spanking new Futile Care Fellowship: “As the population age rises, our patients’ and families’ outlandish expectations are rising even faster.  Meanwhile, satisfaction based reimbursement is rising even faster than that.”

Building on this dynamic, futile care has finally blossomed into its own branch of medicine.  “It is our responsibility to produce physicians trained to provide this specialized service to its full standards… No this has nothing to do with Palliative or Geriatrics…” she answered to a question from the audience.

She continued: “There are a lot of practitioners out there who want to ‘do everything’ for their patients and we expect a competitive applicant pool.”  In order to select the best suited candidates, applicants will be expected to:

• Sustain a firm belief in the possibility of eternal life.
• Have the ability to dispense copious amounts of hugs and false hope.
• Be able to perform CPR with one hand while charting with another.
• Be able to nod with great concern and understanding, while suppressing the “What is wrong with you?!!  Why are you doing this to your grandma?  Just let her go in peace!!!” facial expression
• Have a passion for tubes: gastric tubes, nephrostomy tubes, colostomy tubes, rectal tubes, small tubes, tied tubes, winding tubes, endotracheal tubes, pneumatic tube systems and renal tubules.

In response to the creation of a new fellowship, whatever agency that blesses us with ICD codes eagerly produced a starter pack of ICD-10 codes for Futile Care:

• OMG-01         Futile care, initial encounter
• OMG-167       Futile care, one hundred and sixty seventh encounter
• WTF 123.1     Why?! Why in the world are you doing this?!
• OMFG 01       Futile care, diverting resources from patients who can actually benefit from them
• EF-ME 121     Futile care causing you to pull your own hair out in a fit of rage
• EF-U 124.4     Futile care driven by family’s secondary gain
• END  A11       End Stage Everything
• FC 111.1111    Futile care for a patient with no paired organs remaining.
• STFU 134       Just stop now! No more! Unplug the vent. Go home.

ACGME informed GomerBlog that it intends to accredit the Futile Care Fellowship ASAP.