What is Hospice?
Hospice is a type of medical care that gives seriously ill patients and their loved ones meaningful time together when the focus of care turns from active treatment to comfort and quality of life near the end of life. Hospice is not a place. Rather, it is a full range of services that put patients and families in control, giving them hope about their last days, weeks, and months together.
10 Facts About Hospice Care
- Hospice is for people with advanced illnesses. Hospice provides symptom and pain management for patients with serious illness, no matter their age, culture, beliefs, or cause of illness.
- Hospice can happen anywhere. Hospice is a service that comes to the patient in the place they prefer to be for end-of-life care. Patients at home feel better surrounded by the faces and things they know and love.
- Hospice is a choice. Patients can leave, or “revoke their hospice status,” at any time for any reason. Patients can also come back to hospice at any time, as long as they meet hospice eligibility guidelines.
- Patients can keep taking some medicines while on hospice. Hospice patients are prescribed medicines that manage the symptoms of their advanced illness and improve quality of life.
- Hospice gives medicines as needed to help with symptoms. Hospice doctors try to give just enough medicine to manage symptoms and ease pain.
- Family or friends provide care with support from the hospice team. Family or friends are a hospice patient’s primary caregivers, supported and trained by an expert team that makes regular, scheduled visits. For patients who live in assisted living communities and nursing homes, the hospice team works together with the facility staff.
- There is no limit to the time a patient can be on hospice. Hospice is for patients who have 6 months or less to live according to a doctor, and it can be extended when needed. In surveys, family members often say, “we wish we had known about hospice sooner.”
- Hospice provides home medical equipment and supplies related to the cause of the illness. This includes shower chairs, oxygen tanks, hospital beds, toileting supplies, and more.
- Hospice supports the family. After a patient passes, hospice addresses emotional and spiritual pain suffered by loved ones for more than a year.
- If you have Medicare, Medicaid or private insurance, there is never any out of pocket expense for a patient or their family for our hospice services.
Make Advanced Plans
Hospice care provides the most meaningful improvement to quality of life when it begins sooner in a patient’s disease process rather than later. Ascend Hospice Care recommends these conversations begin as soon as a serious diagnosis is made. Patients can ensure that they receive the care they want—and when they want it—by having early and ongoing discussions about their care goals and preferences with their family, physicians, or facility staff.
Physicians can help patients understand their options and identify their preferences during advance care planning sessions and goals-of-care consultations. These discussions result in advance directives, outline each hospice patient’s circumstances, who can make medical decisions on their behalf, and more.