What You Should Know When You Need Hospice
To begin, everyone should understand that hospice services is not where you receive care. Hospice services is end-of-life care for individuals with a life-limiting disease. Its focus is on quality of life, also called palliative, care.
When you and your family choose hospice services, a group of medical professionals come together to attend to the patient. This team consists of: medical doctors, nurses, home health aides, social workers, chaplains, volunteers, and grief counselors. Services are delivered wherever the patient calls home, including nursing homes, retirement homes and assisted living facilities.
home hospice care arranges: expert management of pain and symptoms, nurses available 24/7, assistance with personal grooming, grief assistance, spiritual counseling, prescriptions, and medical equipment like hospital bed.
Are you or your loved one eligible for Hospice care?
Anyone with a life-expectancy of six months or less, if the disease were to run its expected course, qualifies for care. Many people are on hospice services longer or shorter than six months. A terminal illness doesn’t always progress as anticipated. Some people are taken off hospice care because their condition stops declining or even improves while receiving quality home hospice care.
Two doctors must certify that it is their medical opinion that the life expectancy continues to be six months or less, to remain eligible for Hospice.
When should you consider Hospice as an option?
Whenever you agree that curative treatments are no longer helping or wanted. Hospice care is going to concentrate on you or your loved one’s quality of life, not curing the hospice 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 ones that decide if hospice care is the for you. Many people 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 not anyone can force you to accept hospice care.
Your family doctor may be the first one to mention hospice care, or you may be the first to mention it. You shouldn’t be afraid to discuss care 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 hospice providers in every community. While their core services may be similar, different hospiceproviders can have vastly different levels of services. You do not have to use the hospice that your doctor chooses.
You can interview multiple hospices and request services from the agency that you feel will best meet you and your family's. HospiceBasics.com suggests finding a hospice that others in the community.
3. Find out about on-call services
Excellent hospice care is available nights and weekends. While most visits might occur during the week, a symptom exacerbation could happen at 3AM on a Saturday. Ask them to tell you about their evening response time and on-call staffing.
4. Only choose a hospice team with heart
When describing services with a potential hospice company, make sure they listen. Make sure they demonstrate sincere care and concern for you and your family’s needs. If they are so large that they seem rushed to fully answer your questions, you should use a better hospice provider.
The team at http://HospiceBasics.com is committed to helping people find quality hospice care at end-of-life.