What Is Hospice Anyway?

By Author: blue cuevas
Total Articles: 20
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To begin, everyone should be aware that hospice care is not where you receive care. Hospice is end-of-life care for anyone with a serious disease. Its primary concern is on comfort, also called palliative, care.

When you choose home hospice care, a group of healthcare professionals work together to care for the patient. This group includes: doctors, hospice nurses, certified nursing assistants, social workers, chaplains, volunteers, and grief counselors. Care is delivered wherever the patient calls home, including skilled nursing facilities, skilled nursing homes and assisted livings.

Hospice care arranges: skilled oversight of pain and other symptoms, Registered Nurses on-call day and night, help with personal care, grief support, spiritual counseling, drug therapies, and durable medical equipment.

Are you or your loved one eligible for hospice services?

Anybody with a life-expectancy of six months or less, if the illness were to run its normal course, qualifies for care. Many people are on hospice care longer or shorter than six months. A terminal diagnosis does not ...
... always progress as expected. Some people are taken off hospice care because their condition stops declining or even improves while receiving quality hospice services.

A physician and medical director must attest that it is their opinion that the prognosis continues to be six months or less, to remain eligible for Hospice care.

When should you consider Hospice as an option?

Whenever you agree that curative medical treatment are no longer helping or wanted. Home hospice care is going to focus on you or your loved one’s quality of life, not treating the terminal diagnosis. Hospice does, however, aggressively treat pain and symptoms to ensure you or your loved one is having the best quality of life.

Some Advice for Finding Hospice Care

1. Don’t wait for your doctor to bring up hospice

As the family caregiver, you and your family member are the only ones that can decide if hospice care is the for you. Some individuals find that it helps to make this choice with input from other family members and their family,main doctor. You must freely choose hospice - meaning that nobody can force you to accept hospice care.

Your primary doctor may be the first one to suggest hospice care, or you may be the first to suggest it. You should not be afraid to discuss options with your doctor, including end-of-life care.

Some doctors, mistakenly, feel like offering hospice is a sign of failure and are reluctant to talk about it. Your doctor, along with the hospice Medical Director, will need to certify the prognosis meets the hospice guidelines.

2. Hospices are different

There are almost always multiple home hospice providers in every area. While their core services may be much the same, different hospiceproviders can have very different levels of services. You do not have to use the hospice that your doctor chooses.

You can talk to more than one hospices and request services from the provider that you feel will best take care of you and your family's. We suggest finding a hospice that others in the community.

3. Find out about on-call services

Great hospice care is available whenever you need them. While normal visits might occur during Monday through Friday, a change in condition could happen at 1 a.m. on a Saturday. Ask them to tell you about their evening response time and on-call staffing.

4. Make sure they have compassion

When describing care with a potential hospice agency, make sure they listen. Make sure they show genuine care and concern for you and your family’s situation. If they are so large that they seem too busy to fully answer your questions, you should use a better hospice provider.

http://HospiceBasics.com is an online resource for individuals seeking more information on quality hospice care.