Understanding Hospice Care
Types of Hospice Care
A major misconception about entering hospice care is that all medical treatment comes to a stop.
In fact, CompassionCare Hospice patients receive expert medical care, but with a different focus. Instead of seeking to cure the patient, the hospice team addresses a range of problems, from intense pain to depression, that dying people and their loved ones often experience.
The shift is from aggressively seeking a cure to providing expert pain and symptom management - palliative care. The goal is to help you and your loved ones to have the best quality of life possible during this important time.
What is Palliative Care?
Life-limiting illnesses often cause intense discomfort: physical pain, anxiety, restlessness, constipation, nausea, secretions, shortness of breath, and seizures, for example.
In addition, end of life is a time that generates intense feelings—anxiety, isolation, grief, and confusion—not only for the patient, but for everyone who loves that person.
Unfortunately, traditional medicine has proven ill-equipped to help in these areas. Most doctors, focused solely on cure, know little about how to manage pain and symptoms in patients with a life-limiting illness. And doctors rarely have the time or training to address the pain and suffering of the patient’s loved ones.
At CompassionCare Hospice, specially trained health professionals work with you. Working together as a team, they take an holistic approach, looking for ways to help not only with physical, but also with the psychosocial and spiritual domains that become so important at this stage of life.
CompassionCare Hospice health professionals are experts in palliative care, which involves taking care of the medical, emotional, social, and spiritual needs of the patient and supporting the needs of family members. Palliative care involves the whole person—body, mind, spirit, heart, and soul.
Almost always, the first priority is to bring the patient’s pain and symptoms under control. Once this is achieved, other concerns can be addressed:
- Help in understanding the illness and what you can expect in the future
Financial stresses - Unfinished business in personal relationships
- Spiritual distress
- Grief—for the patient, over the loss of health and mobility; for loved ones, over the anticipation of what is to come
4 Levels of Hospice Care
Hospice patients may require differing intensities of care during the course of their disease. CompassionCare Hospice provides the four levels of care defined by Medicare:
Routine Home Care.
As long as the patient’s symptoms are under control, the hospice team supports the caregivers in providing this level of care in the home setting, whether that is a private residence, assisted living or nursing home.
Almost all CompassionCare Hospice patients spend more than 95 percent of their hospice experience in routine home care.
Continuous Home Care.
CompassionCare Hospice nurses and home health aides will provide palliative care in the patient's home for longer periods of time, any hour of the day and night. There is a diagnosis specific medical criterion that must be met before Medicare will authorize Continuous Care.
Inpatient Respite Care.
Caregivers occasionally need to take short breaks to maintain their own health. In this instance, the patient can be transferred to a hospital Inpatient Center—for a short-term (up to five days) while the caregiver takes a break. We also provide respite care in select nursing homes.
General Inpatient Care.
Palliative care is provided in a Long Term Care Facility (LTC) or an acute care hospital. The facility will have a Registered Nurse on duty 24 hours a day and is used for symptom management. The CompassionCare RN will take the role of Case Manager and ensure that the patient is symptom free during the inpatient stay.
