Hospice focuses on caring, not curing, and in most cases, care is provided in the patient’s home. When care shifts from treatment to symptom management and quality of life. Hospice provides comprehensive comfort care as well as support for the family and attempts to cure the person's illness are stopped. Patients who are put on hospice have a life expectancy of 6 months or less.
Who makes up the hospice team?
The patient’s personal physician
Hospice physician (or medical director)
Nurses
Hospice aides
Social workers
Spiritual care providers or other counselors
Bereavement professionals
Speech, physical, and/or other occupational therapists
Trained volunteers.
What services are provided?
Manages the patient’s pain and symptoms
Assists the patient with the emotional and psychosocial and spiritual aspects of dying
Provides needed drugs, medical supplies, and equipment
Coaches the family on how to care for the patient
Delivers special services like physical therapy, speech therapy, and even music and art therapy
Makes short-term inpatient care available when pain or symptoms become too difficult to manage at home, or the caregiver needs respite time
Provides bereavement care and counseling to surviving family and friends.
What role do volunteers play in hospice care?
Hospice provides trained volunteers to aid the family and patients. Volunteers also support the work of the hospice program that might not involve patient or family interaction.
Who qualifies for hospice care?
Hospice care is for any person who has a life-threatening or terminal illness. Most reimbursement sources require a prognosis of six months or less if the illness runs its normal course. All hospices consider the patient and family together as the unit of care.
How is hospice care paid for?
Most people receiving hospice care are covered by the Medicare hospice benefit. This benefit covers virtually all aspects of hospice care with little out-of-pocket expense to the patient or family. As a result, the financial burdens usually associated with caring for a terminally ill patient are virtually nonexistent. In addition, most private health plans and Medicaid in most states and the District of Columbia cover hospice services.
Where does hospice care take place?
The majority of hospice patients are cared for in their own homes or the homes of a loved one. “Home” may also be broadly construed to include services provided in nursing homes, assisted living centers, hospitals…wherever the patient considers to be home.
