Hospice care is a specialized form of support for people facing the final stages of a terminal illness. Its goal is to provide comfort, dignity, and quality of life when curative treatments are no longer effective. Hospice is an incredibly helpful and important service, but many people mistakenly believe it provides 24-hour care. It does not.
How does hospice work?
- Eligibility: Typically, patients become eligible when doctors expect they have six months or less to live.
- Care team: A group of professionals works together, including doctors, nurses, social workers, counselors, and trained volunteers.
- Services provided:
- Pain management and symptom control
- Emotional and spiritual support
- Help with daily tasks and personal care
- Medication and medical equipment
- Guidance for family members
- Location: Care can be provided at home, in nursing facilities, or in dedicated hospice centers, such as a hospice house.
- Cost: Medicare, Medicaid, and most private insurance plans cover hospice care.
- Focus: The emphasis shifts from curing the illness to ensuring the patient’s comfort and addressing their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs.
Hospice care aims to make a person’s final months as peaceful and meaningful as possible. It supports not just the patient, but also their loved ones during this challenging time. It is often a way to bring a loved one home to be with family rather than residing at a care facility. However, this means family members and caregivers must be around to provide attendant care. Hospice care providers generally check in 1-2 times per day. They will take vital statistics, bring additional medical supplies, and provide guidance and resources to the patient and the family.
Unfortunately, several of our firm employees have experienced hospice care for their family members in the recent past. Each of them has been able to bring their family member home for their final few days of life and spend precious moments with their loved one and other family members. Each has said the hospice services were phenomenal and instrumental to making this happen. On the day their loved one was transferred home, hospice provided a hospital bed, medical supplies and training on how to assist with medications and activities of daily living. Then, hospice caregivers routinely checked in, about once per day. The visits lasted from 20-60 minutes, depending on the amount of questions and information that were exchanged. That meant that family members or paid caregivers needed to be in the home while hospice was not there. While hospice is a phenomenal resource, it does require vigilant care by non-hospice caregivers.
The entire experience was draining for our firm members. In conversations together, there was one theme which kept popping up. They were surprised by how much additional care was needed despite having hospice workers. It can feel very isolating to have these big decisions to make and while the care is helpful, there were still a lot of decisions. Please be open and honest with loved ones along with your support team. Constant communication is going to help ease some of the anxiety and stress of managing hospice care.
We hope that when you or your family needs hospice, that this article helped you understand what to expect and that you find it as helpful as our employees and our clients do.
