Hospice as the Default Option

For all those patients who have left no evidence of their treatment preferences at the end-of-life, hospice should be the default argues this physician (in the clip below).  

I agree.  It is time to revisit, as Justice Rehnquist put in in Cruzan, the "societal judgment about how the risk of error should be distributed."  Empirical evidence over the past twenty years about patient preferences and the reversibility of certain medical states supports Justice Brennan's observation that "an erroneous decision in either direction is irrevocable."  We would commit far, far less error by having hospice as a default option for certain populations of the chronically critically ill.