Tag: hospice care

Hospice care is for people who are near the end of their lives. These services are provided by a team of health care professionals who provide maximum comfort for terminally ill people by reducing pain and satisfying physical, psychological, social, and spiritual needs.

What exactly does Hospice do?

To help the family, hospice provides counseling, respite care, and practical support. Unlike typical health care, the focus of hospice care is not to cure the underlying disease. The goal is to support the highest quality of life possible in the remaining time your loved one has.

What services are included in hospice care?

Hospice staff is on standby 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Ready to meet the patient wherever they call home.

A hospice care team typically includes:

Doctors

Primary care doctors and hospice doctors or medical directors will supervise care. Each patient can choose an attending doctor as their primary caregiver. This can be your previous doctor or hospice doctor.

Nurses

The nurse will visit you or your loved one to provide care. They are also responsible for coordinating the hospice team.

Family Health Assistant

A home health aid that provides additional support for daily care, such as dressing, bathing, and eating.

Spiritual Counselor

Pastors, priests, or other spiritual counselors can provide spiritual care and guidance for the entire family.

Social Worker

Social workers provide advice and support. They can also provide recommendations for other support systems.

Pharmacist

A pharmacist provides medication supervision and advice on the most effective way to relieve symptoms.

Volunteer

Well-trained volunteers provide a variety of services. They range from providing companionship or respite opportunities for caregivers, to helping with transportation or other practical needs.

Other Professionals

If needed, speech, physical, and occupational therapists can provide treatment.

Bereavement Counselor

Trained bereavement counselors provide care and guidance after a loved one dies in hospice care.

Treatment and Support

Once patients receive hospice care, they will receive routine care designed to maximize comfort and quality of life. Routine care may include pain management, symptom management, and spiritual counseling for patients and family members. Even daily work assistance, nutrition services, and treatment services.

You can provide regular hospice care wherever you call home; whether it is in a professional nursing facility, assisted living facility, memory care facility, or your own house. Care will be performed intermittently according to the needs of the patient.

Sometimes called crisis care, when loved ones experience a medical crisis or their symptoms require more in-depth management, they may require continuous hospice care.

During this kind of medical crisis, round-the-clock care or extended care time is good for patients and their families, giving caregivers the opportunity to withdraw from hands-on care and focus on taking on family roles with their loved ones.

If the patient’s symptoms cannot be managed at home, they may need to be hospitalized. The goal here is to control severe pain and stabilize symptoms so that the patient can go home if possible. Some people may choose to spend their last days in an inpatient center as a neutral and safe space with their families and loved ones.

Inpatient hospice care centers also provide temporary care for home hospice. These occasional short-term hospitalizations can provide much-needed rest time for relatives who provide care at home while allowing people to receive proper, round-the-clock symptom management.

Customized Levels of Care

Your doctor or hospice team will provide you with guidance throughout your hospice journey and determine the appropriate level of hospice care for you or your loved ones.

In the four levels of hospice care, the concept remains the same: provide professional medical care and emotional support, and respect the unique wishes of patients. Knowing when and where to provide hospice care is the first step in understanding your or your loved one’s choices in the dying journey.

Is Hospice Right for You or a Loved One?

Inpatient hospice care centers also provide temporary care for home hospice patients. These occasional short-term hospitalizations can provide much-needed rest time for relatives who provide care at home while allowing patients to receive proper, round-the-clock symptom management.

Any time you or your loved one is diagnosed with a terminal illness, you should consider hospice care. Discuss with your doctor that all available care options are appropriate, including hospice care.

Common diseases suitable for hospice care include the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s and dementia, cancer, heart disease, lung disease, AIDS, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. When the doctor determines that the life expectancy is six months or less due to the natural course of the disease, patients diagnosed with these diseases are eligible for hospice care.

At this time, comfort care and symptom management becomes the main focus. This is because continued treatment is no longer beneficial. A good question to ask yourself is, would I be surprised if the person I love is not here in a year?

Hospice Care Gives You A Team

Unlike any other care, hospice care provides a higher level of support. A multidisciplinary team composed of doctors, registered nurses, certified nursing assistants, medical social workers, spiritual counselors, grief counselors, and volunteers work together to solve the physical, social, emotional and spiritual needs of each patient and family.

Regardless of the patient’s age or ability to pay, the hospice care team provides patients with home care, including personal residence, relative’s home, assisted living or professional care, or in one of the nursing home-style residential care facilities.

Hospice care focuses on each patient and family by providing expert care in pain relief and symptom management, emotional and spiritual counseling (if needed), and grief support.

If you’re still unsure as to whether hospice care is the right choice for your loved one, you should speak with a trained counselor. They can assist you in making the right decision, not just for your loved one, but for your family, as well. Contact us at Mary T for more information.

Hospice care is a service given to a terminally ill patient or anyone given a prognosis of six months or less to live by a medical doctor. Also considered end-of-life care, or comfort care, Medicare has defined hospice services as made up of four levels of care. Not all hospice patients need or receive all four levels of hospice care. One patient may only use one level, while another may go through all four levels in a week or less. Each hospice patient goes through their own unique journey.

Level 1: Routine Home Care

This is the most basic level of medicare certified hospice care. It exists for patients living at home, have been confirmed eligible for hospice care by a medical doctor, and qualify for Medicare Part A and B. The majority of patients who receive 90 days of hospice care or more are getting this type of hospice care. This level of hospice is usually appointment-based and includes such services as:

• Physical therapy
• Occupational therapy
• Intermittent skilled nursing services
• Durable medical equipment
• Part-time use of a home health aide
• Medical supplies for home use

At this level of hospice, you don’t have access to 24/7 care. However, many centers for medicare and hospice agencies keep a nurse on-call at all times for families that have urgent needs.

Level 2: Continuous Home Care

Continuous care is the second of the four levels of hospice care. It is usually used in times of crisis. We elevate patients that require continuous care for a minimum of eight hours straight, within a 24 hours to manage acute symptoms, into this hospice care level of care. Continuous home care may cover such symptoms as:

• Severe nausea
• Vomiting
• Unrelieved pain
• Heightened anxiety or panic attacks
• A change in primary caregiver support at home

If a hospice patient has symptoms that cannot be controlled, level 2 hospice care allows a nurse to stay with the family as long as necessary until the patient is comfortable. Level 2 can also assist in cases where the person is actively dying.

Level 3: General Inpatient Care

Sometimes patients may experience symptoms so extreme that they cannot receive adequate hospice and palliative care at home. Or sometimes they feel more comfortable at a certified hospice care facility. General inpatient care gives a patient access to palliative care 24-hours a day, and can be done at a nursing home, assisted living facility or other hospice facility. Some patients with a terminal illness prefer an inpatient facility because it eases the responsibility of family caregivers and allows them to simply be there for emotional support. A nursing facility can administer sufficient pain relief and medications along with emotional support for everyone during a difficult time. This doesn’t mean that an inpatient facility gives a better level of care than intermittent or routine home care. Every patient is different and needs to take advantages of the services that best suit their wishes and needs.

Level 4: Respite Care

You shouldn’t underestimate the stress of being a primary caregiver. While many of them would not have it any other way, taking care of someone who is nearing the end of their life is an around the clock job. Medicare understands that sometimes, for many reasons, people need to take a break, or step back from giving their loved one constant care. With respite care, we can admit a patient to a 24-hour nursing facility on a temporary basis. Which gives a caregiver time to take care of their own physical and emotional needs. Not everyone needs this hospice benefit, but respite care can be a lifesaver to caregivers who do not have enough help or support.

Who Determines The Levels of Hospice Care?

Anyone who qualifies for hospice has a team that consists of both the patient’s personal doctor and a hospice doctor. The levels of hospice care a person qualifies for falls under the responsibility of the hospice physician. The most important thing is that with these four levels of hospice care in place, a patient may always be able to get the care they need to live out their lives in a calm and peaceful manner.

If you have any questions about our hospice care services here at Mary T, send us a message or give us a call.

Nobody likes to contemplate the need for hospice care because it’s never easy to face the loss of a loved one. It’s a decision that usually needs to be made while dealing with strong emotions such as sadness, anger, and grief. However, hospice care can be comforting as well. Both for the patient and the family. Hospice care criteria is different from palliative care in that palliative care can begin at the time of diagnosis. Hospice care, on the other hand, begins once treatment is stopped and it becomes apparent that a person will not survive their illness. Both hold the comfort of the patient in high regard, but hospice is where end-of-life comfort care becomes a top priority.

When is it time to consider hospice care as an option?

People become eligible for hospice when a doctor determines they have a terminal illness with a prognosis of six months or less if the disease runs its normal course. A doctor will usually recommend hospice services based on the following three situations:

1. The patient’s condition stops improving, and they fail to thrive. Usually, at this point, they have progressed into end-stage disease.
2. If one’s goals change and they decide that they aren’t feeling better and would rather not be in a hospital setting. Or, they feel anxious about dying and want extra supportive care.
3. Any acute health event, such as a heart attack or stroke, may require immediate end-of-life care.

During hospice, the goals of treatment change. You are no longer treating to cure a disease, you are treating to keep the patient as relaxed and pain-free as possible. Whether patients are suffering from a terminal illness or simply old age, the goals are the same. To ease the process of dying and make it as comfortable for the patient and the family as possible.

How do patients qualify for hospice care?

First, a medical professional must refer a patient for hospice care. Then a hospice nurse will perform an assessment of the patient’s health. During this assessment, the hospice nurse will look for certain hospice care criteria, such as:

• Daytime sleeping
• Increased cognitive impairment or confusion
• Weight loss of 10% in the last 3 – 6 months
• Incontinence
• Disease progression in spite of treatment
• Not performing daily activities
• Increased hospital stays or visits to the ER
• Pain and suffering

Once the assessment is complete, it’s reviewed by a hospice team, which is responsible for making the final recommendation that a patient will qualify for hospice care. However, in most medical facilities, it is the medical director that makes the final decision.

What is the hospice care criteria for Medicare?

Hospice is usually covered under the Medicare Hospice Benefit for patients that are eligible for Medicare Part A – Hospital Insurance. A hospice benefit is also available to those that qualify for Medicaid as well. In order to confirm hospice eligibility from Medicare, both a hospice doctor and your regular doctor must certify that the patient is terminally ill with a life expectancy of six months or less if the disease runs its normal course.

It’s important to note that when you agree to hospice care, you forgo any care meant to cure your illness. The patient or their power of attorney will be required to sign a statement choosing hospice care over other Medicare benefits used to treat the patient. Medicare coverage for hospice care includes anything needed for pain relief, nursing and social services, drugs for pain management, durable medical equipment, homemaker services, and other things such as spiritual and grief counseling for the patient and their family.

Hospice Is Difficult but Often Comforting

Once you get through making the hard decision, patients always benefit from end-of-life care. Hospice teams are very experienced in making a custom plan of care for their patients. Whether you decide to use an inpatient facility or do home hospice, the family and the hospice team work closely to provide the best services to benefit the patient. Hospice will make a very difficult time easier to manage for all involved.

Hospice care can be a necessary part of end-of-life care. With the support of good hospice care, your loved one can receive the treatment needed for comfort in their final days.

If you have someone close to you who needs hospice care, we encourage you to contact us at Mary T today. Our specialists can offer the guidance and support you need to make the best decision for your family.

What Are the Goals of Hospice Care?

The goals of hospice care begin with ensuring that the patient has improved quality of life during the last phases of an illness or disease; specifically, one that cannot be cured. When someone has a disease that can’t be cured, it means that hospice care is needed.

The goals of hospice care include providing treatment that serves to lessen the severity of the patient’s symptoms. When a medical condition is terminal, hospice care works to make the patient as comfortable as possible.

This is done in coordination with the patient’s primary hospice doctor, who prescribes medication for the care team to administer. Although the medication isn’t intended to cure, it can help the ill experience less pain and suffering.

What’s more, family members and loved ones can offer their support in an effort to lift the spirits of the terminally ill patient.

Clergy may also offer spiritual guidance throughout the final months of the patient’s life. Emotional support is essential in hospice, too, as it is a big part of the help patients need during this time.

What Are 4 Goals for End-of-Life Care?

While the wishes of terminally ill patients vary, this care program tries to provide the same hospice treatment goals for everyone. This care includes help in the following areas:

• Mental and emotional needs
• Physical comfort
• Spiritual issues
• Practical tasks

Some patients in hospice wish to be left alone, while others desire ongoing support and care from family members and people around them. This level of care is designed to fulfill the needs of terminally ill patients.

Communication Matters

The goal is to ensure that as much care and support is available as possible. Some families may have a different goal in mind from the next. It is therefore essential to communicate these desires with the hospice doctor and care team as often as possible.

Ask questions and request information about these goals. This will make it easier to develop a plan that has the patient’s wishes in mind.

Although death is inevitable for everyone, people are affected differently by it. As such, there needs to be a unique hospice care program in place that serves to provide services centered on each patient.

Ongoing Hospice Care

But just because there is no possibility for a cure, that doesn’t mean that hospice care should cease. With the 4 goals of end-of-life care, your loved one can experience medical support from caregivers, as well as support from friends and family.

Patient and family connection is very important, as it helps to provide for the mental and emotional needs of the suffering. Nursing staff is also available to assist with physical comfort, and clergy helps with spiritual issues.

Caregivers take care of many of the practical tasks, ensuring that all aspects of end-of-life care are met. With all of this care in action, patients with a terminal illness can find respite in the final months or days of their lives.

Support for Hospice Caregivers

It’s important to note that caregivers who provide care services for patients in hospice are working very physically demanding jobs. As such, they, too, require patient and family support.

Whether the caregiver is a licensed health care professional or a family member, they may need their own respite and social support. This ensures that they will be able to provide the best care possible, whether at the patient’s home or in a healthcare facility.

What Does Hospice Do at End of Life?

Hospice makes sure that the patient’s primary wishes are met. From lessening their pain to ensuring that the patient is in the facility of their choosing, hospice works with the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization so that all of the patient’s needs are met.

It is important for the patient to have as many options as possible. By being provided with all available services and medical resources, the patient can get the necessary care.

Working Together

Hospice also works together with hospice doctors to ensure that the patient is provided with the medications they need for fewer symptoms. This is done to give the patient comfort care during their final days.

Nursing staff may provide medications in either the patient’s home or in a hospital, depending on the patient’s wishes. With a focus on good social care and ongoing care, hospice is a necessary component to the patient’s final days of life.

Families are encouraged to take part in this program if it meets the desires of the patient.

Contact Mary T Today

Our team is here for you. If you have any questions or would like more information on hospice, we will be happy to assist you. We can help find the most suitable place for your family member, whether in a local facility or at home.

You don’t have to face hospice care on your own. Please feel free to contact us so we can help you through this difficult time.

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While it’s true that most people who are receiving hospice care die shortly after being enrolled, there are some patients who continue to survive well after their expected end of life. That’s because most patients don’t realize they could benefit from hospice care much earlier in their illness. A patient may survive 6 months while in hospice, possibly longer, even though there isn’t a cure for their illness.

There have been some cases in which a patient has miraculously overcome their terminal illness without a cure during hospice care. Hospice team members would then work with the patient and their family to prepare for discharge. However, this would only happen if the patient no longer meets the eligibility for hospice care.

A hospice care team would likely coordinate Medicaid services during this time to ensure that the patient’s health care is monitored and support continues after their release from the nursing home, assisted living, or medical facility.