Provides grief support, also known as bereavement support.Makes short-term inpatient care available when pain or symptoms become too difficult to manage at home or when caregivers need respite time.Delivers special services like speech and physical therapy when needed.
The goal of hospice care is to provide how to#
Coaches caregivers on how to care for the patient.Provides medications, medical supplies and equipment.Manages the patient’s pain and symptoms.As a relationship with hospice begins, hospice staff will want to know how best to support the patients and their caregivers.Īmong its major responsibilities, the interdisciplinary hospice team: In many cases, the patient’s inner circle are the primary caregivers. Both the primary doctor and the hospice medical director may work together to coordinate the patient’s medical care, especially when symptoms are difficult to manage. Often, people choose to have their primary doctor involved in medical care. The patient’s personal physician may be included.Speech, physical, and occupational therapists, if needed.Hospice physician (or medical director).The interdisciplinary team usually consists of: The goal is to keep the patient as pain-free as possible, with the loved ones nearby. Hospice care is provided by a team that works together focusing on the patient’s needs whether physical, emotional, or spiritual. Medicare covers up to 5 days of respite care at a time. Respite care can be for as short as a few hours or for as long as several days. The hospice team coaches caregivers on how to care for the patient and even provides respite care when caregivers need a break. Although some hospice care is provided in hospitals, in-hospice facilities or nursing homes, most patients are cared for in the place they call home, which is where most people would prefer to be.Īlthough hospice provides a lot of support, the day-to-day care of a person receiving hospice care is provided by family, friends, the inner circle, or paid home health aides. Hospices care for people where they live. Hospice care is an interdisciplinary team-oriented approach to expert medical care, pain management, and emotional and spiritual support expressly tailored to the patient’s and family/inner circle’s wishes and needs. Hospice care is not just for cancer or for older people it is for any serious illness at any age. We are now getting more home patients because we have a strong relationship with the hospital systems, so the home-based side is growing exponentially even though we started out with a program designed around nursing homes.Hospice care focuses on quality of life when a cure is no longer possible, or the burdens of treatment outweigh the benefits. For example: in our Lubbock agency, the majority of our census are individual patents in their own homes, whereas in Waco, we originally had a high percentage of nursing home residents because we had more referral relationships with nursing homes in that region. If patients are having social issues or spiritual issues, they are there to help the nurse practitioner and the nurse figure out what’s in the community that can be pulled in. They don’t necessarily go out and see patients, but they do provide a link to community resources. Our home health and hospice staff, Interim social workers, chaplains and volunteers provide additional supportive services to the CarePoint palliative care team according to what’s needed. With palliative care, we can be more fluid across the continuum of care through medical and supportive management that are matched to a patient’s care needs when they do not qualify for hospice or home health benefits.īob: The services that we provide are the same, but the ways in which CarePoint nurses and nurse practitioners are integrated into the community are different for each program. With home health and hospice, there are rules and regulations which specifically define how the benefit is administered. This communication is ongoing as my staff works with the patient and their family to ensure that we know their preferences and goals for health care over time. My team takes on the role of community case manager – they are the ones helping the family to understand the differences in care between different programs, helping them understand their prognosis and disease trajectory, and initiating advance care planning conversations. Patients and families call us, physician groups, hospitals, nursing homes, our home health agency and others refer patients to us, and hospice patients who are being live discharged are referred to us.