For many people, the term “hospice” is synonymous with hopelessness and death. It is a place to head when nothing else is able to be done. However, that could not be further from the truth. Great hospice care is all about celebrating life, as well as making the most of each day with family and loved ones.
Hospice care is a fairly new industry and did not appear in the U.S. until the 1970s. Before that point, physicians did very little to comfort and get dying patients and their loved ones prepared. Instead, a lot of patients who were terminally ill continued challenging treatments which oftentimes neither alleviated symptoms nor enhanced or extended their life quality. In turn, a lot of dying patients spent their last days in hospital beds, occasionally in pain and alone.
How Can Hospice Care Support a Family Member?
Hospice care provides patients who are terminally ill a chance to live out their final days as pain-free and comfortable as possible. Similarly, palliative care focuses on decreasing the seriousness of symptoms or slowing the progress of a disease for the chronically ill, instead of attempting to discover a cure. Both types of care eventually share the same goal: to alleviate suffering, as well as improve a patient’s life quality, however long this might be.
This type of care offers a holistic approach and has the goal of treating the “whole person,” and not merely the symptoms and signs of illness. This means supporting an individual not just physically, yet also emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.
High-quality hospice plans have interdisciplinary teams that consist of physicians, volunteers, certified nursing assistants, chaplains, social workers, and nurses. Together, members of the team combine their experience to create a personalized care plan which addresses the one-of-a-kind needs of each family and patient.
Within a traditional hospital setting, it’s frequently physicians who make care decisions and recommendations. However, in a setting of hospice care, team members work collectively to address issues as they come up. For instance, if the patient’s pain grows worse, doctors and nurses might tweak medicine, whereas a social worker might offer mind-body coping methods. Or if the patient feels hopeless or depressed, physicians might prescribe antidepressants, a chaplain might provide pastoral support, and volunteers and social workers may provide emotional support. For caregivers of patients and loved ones, this form of multidisciplinary support also can offer a respite from being the only source of stability and comfort.
Kinds of hospice care
A lot of folks believe getting hospice care includes moving to an assisted living facility, yet that’s only one choice. Each kind of hospice care home is made to meet the needs of the hospice family and patient.
There are 4 different hospice care levels:
- Health care and home center (routine hospice care): If the patient has a family member or loved one who is able to stay home and assist in managing care, they might select routine hospice home care. Within this situation, a member of the hospice team will make routine visits and offer care as necessary. However, patients needing long-term care may search for routine hospice care at health care facilities (additionally referred to as nursing homes). Home and health care center patients are provided all the same multidisciplinary services, support, and education.
- Inpatient Care: This type of care is made for symptom management and pain control that can’t be completely addressed in a health care center or at home. Typically, when symptoms are under control, a patient might go back to the health care facility or return home.
- Continuous Care: This type of care offers skilled nursing in times of crisis or for symptom and pain management. It might be offered at home or inside a health care facility and has the goal of avoiding patient hospitalization.
- Respite care: This type of care provides home caregivers a break from their caregiver duties. At a time, Medicare pays for 5 consecutive days of such care.
Eligibility and payment
Anyone who deals with a life-threatening illness is a possible hospice care candidate, which includes the ones dealing with cancer, renal, liver, or heart failure, ALS, HIV, Alzheimer’s disease, and pulmonary lung disease.
For patients to qualify for hospice care, she or he has to:
- Meet regulatory rules certified by a doctor that states that a patient has 6 months or less to live.
- Have a referral created by a patient’s attending doctor.
- Be assessed by a hospice admission nurse.
- Meet rules set up by Medicare.
The majority of people don’t know that hospice care services might be covered by Medicare. Those services involve the ones offered by a social worker, case manager, CNA (certified nursing assistant), and chaplain in conjunction with prescription medicine, as well as all of the specialized medical supplies and equipment associated with that terminal illness. But if the patient significantly improves or makes the decision to pursue aggressive curative treatment, she or he forfeits their hospice benefits.
If you or a family member is experiencing a terminal or chronic illness, and treatment is no longer working, speak with your physician about hospice services. If you believe your family member might benefit from hospice care, do not be afraid to begin the conversation. Seeking this type of care is anything but giving up. It may assist in easing your family member’s pain and permit you and your family members to live as joyfully and fully as possible.
Let’s recap:
In order to be eligible for hospice care, a hospice physician and your Senior healthcare provider have to certify that you are terminally ill, which means you have a life expectancy of six months or less. Once you agree to hospice care, you are agreeing to palliative care (comfort care) rather than care to cure your illness. In addition, you have to sign a statement electing hospice care rather than additional benefits Medicare covers to treat your terminal illness and associated conditions. Coverage will include:
- All services and items necessary for symptom management and pain relief
- Social, nursing, and medical services
- pain management drugs
- Durable medical equipment for symptom management and pain relief
- Homemaker and aide services
- Additional covered services are needed to manage your pain and additional symptoms, as well as grief and spiritual counseling for you and your loved ones.
Usually, Medicare-certified hospice care is provided in your home or additional center where you live, such as a Sugar Land nursing home.
Original Medicare costs
- You do not have to pay anything for hospice care.
- You’ll pay a copayment of as much as $5 for every prescription for outpatient medication for symptom and pain management. In the seldom case, that the hospice benefit does not cover your medication, your hospice provider ought to get in touch with your plan to check if Part D covers it.
- You might pay 5 percent of the Medicare-approved quantity for inpatient respite care.
Take note:
In order to discover how much your service, item, or test will cost, speak with your health care provider or doctor. The specific quantity you will owe is dependent on several things, such as:
- Additional insurance you might have
- How much your physician charge
- Whether your healthcare provider accepts assignment
- The kind of facility
- Where you receive your service, item, or test
What is it?
Depending upon your terminal illness and associated conditions, the plan of care that your hospice team designs may include any or all of the following services:
- Physicians’ services
- Medical and nursing services
- Durable medical equipment for symptom management and pain relief
- Medical supplies, such as catheters or bandages
- Pain management drugs
- Homemaker and aide services
- Occupational therapy services
- Physical therapy services
- Social services
- Speech-language pathology services.
- Dietary counseling
- Grief and spiritual counseling for you and your loved ones
- Short-term inpatient care for symptoms and pain management. This type of care has to be in a Medicare‑approved center, such as a hospital, hospice facility, or skilled nursing center which contracts with the hospice.
- Inpatient respite care — care you receive in a Medicare-approved center (such as an inpatient center, nursing home, or hospital), so that your normal caregiver (such as a friend or family member) may rest. The hospice provider arranges that for you. It is possible to stay up to five days every time you receive respite care. It’s possible to receive respite care more than one time, yet only on a periodic basis.
- Any additional services that Medicare covers that manage your pain and other symptoms associated with your terminal illness and oriented conditions, as your hospice team suggests.
Medicare does not cover room & board once you obtain hospice care in your home or additional facility in which you live (such as a nursing home).
Things you should know
Only your hospice physician and your regular healthcare provider may certify that you are terminally ill and have a life expectancy of six months or less. After six months, you may continually receive hospice care so long as the hospice doctor or hospice medical director recertifies (at a one-on-one meeting) that you still are terminally ill.
Usually, hospice care is provided in your home yet also may be covered within a hospice inpatient center. Original Medicare still will pay for covered benefits for all health issues that are not part of your terminal illness and associated conditions; however, that’s unusual. Once you select hospice care, you make the decision that you no longer desire care to cure your terminal illness, and/or your physician determines that efforts to cure the illness are not working. When you pick hospice care, your hospice benefit usually will cover everything needed. Read article for New Developments in Alzheimer’s and Dementia Research.
Medicare will not cover any of those when your hospice benefit begins:
- Treatment is meant to cure the terminal illness and/or associated conditions. Speak to your physician if you are considering receiving treatment to cure your terminal illness. As a hospice patient, you have the right to halt hospice care at any point.
- Prescription medicine to cure your terminal illness (instead of for pain relief or symptom control).
- Care from any provider (hospice) that was not establish by the hospice team. You have to receive hospice care from the provider (hospice) you pick. All care received for your illness has to be arranged by or given by a hospice team. You cannot obtain the same kind of hospice care from a different hospice unless you actually change your provider. But it is still possible to visit your regular nurse practitioner or doctor if you have chosen her or him to be the attending healthcare professional who assists in supervising your hospice care.
- Room & board. Medicare does not cover room & board if you receive hospice care in your house or if you reside in a nursing home or hospice inpatient center. If your hospice team makes the decision that you require respite care or short-term inpatient services that they arrange, Medicare covers your facility stay. You might need to pay a copayment for your respite stay.
- Care you receive as a hospital outpatient (such as an emergency room), care you receive as a hospital inpatient, or ambulance transportation unless it is either arranged by the hospice team or is unassociated with your illness and associated conditions.
Get in touch with your hospice team before getting any of those services or you may need to pay the whole cost.
Hospice Care at Optimum Personal Care
The concentration of hospice isn’t on treatment, yet on the symptom and pain management, acknowledgment, comfort measures, supporting family members, and offering the best quality of life that enables an individual to live their final days to the fullest, with grace, dignity, and purpose.
For more information on our Hospice Care services in Sugar Land Tx please feel free to get in touch with the friendly staff at Optimum Personal Care today in the Missouri City, TX area at 281.565.4144.