What is Hospice?

 

When a cure is no longer possible, a special kind of care is available which maximizes the quality of life for patients with a limited life expectancy.  Hospice provides this special care, assisting both patient and family members to cope with incurable disease during the final journey of life.

 

This care is provided as an alternative to hospitalization or nursing home placement.  The hospice program enables families to remain together during this time of crisis with an emphasis on effective symptom management and pain control.   Hospice allows the patient to experience a dignified death in their home.  An interdisciplinary team of professionals and volunteers make routine visits in the home and are available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The goal is to support a patient’s desire to live each day to the fullest and enable him to spend his last days with dignity in the comfort of his own home.

 

Hospice care focuses on a coordinated program of palliative care and supportive services designed to meet the unique needs of patients and their families.  Hospice neither hastens nor postpones death.  The goal of Hospice is to care for you and your family, not to cure the illness.

 

A medically directed interdisciplinary team of professionals provides hospice services. This team consists of the patient’s personal physician, the hospice medical director, nurses, home health aides, social workers, spiritual support counselors, trained volunteers, and speech, physical, and occupational therapists. 

 

Hospice care is designed primarily to provide pain control and symptom management in an environment which is emotionally, psychosocially, and spiritually supportive. At the center of hospice and palliative care is the belief that each of us has the right to die pain free and with dignity and that our families will receive the necessary support to allow us to do so.

 

The hospice team develops a care plan that meets each patient’s individual needs for pain management and symptom control.  Hospice is a choice, not a requirement.  A patient may choose to withdraw from the hospice plan of care at any time and retain traditional medical care to seek medical treatments that may become available.

 

Hospice care focuses on comfort, support, compassion, and dignity.  Hospice embraces patients with life-limiting illness to provide services and programs that can help them live complete and rich lives. These services also help the patients' family cope with loss and grief.

 

With hospice care available, there is no need for pain and symptoms to go unmanaged or for individuals and their families to be without support.  To achieve the full benefit of hospice care we encourage that our services begin early in the progression of the terminal illness.