Sacred Heart Senior Living

Palliative Care & Hospice...Sooner is Better Than Later. It Is a Blessing

Q. What's the difference between palliative care and hospice care?
A. Palliative care is whole-person care that relieves symptoms of a disease or disorder, whether or not it can be cured. Hospice is a specific type of palliative care for people who likely have 6 months or less to live. In other words, hospice care is always palliative, but not all palliative care is hospice care.

Q. What is palliative medicine?
A. Palliative medicine is a medical sub-specialty provided by doctors who offer palliative care for people who are seriously ill. Palliative care relieves suffering and improves quality of life for people of any age and at any stage in a serious illness, whether that illness is curable, chronic, or life-threatening.

Q. What is hospice?
A. Hospice is a philosophy of care. It treats the person rather than the disease and focuses on quality of life. It surrounds the patient and family with a team consisting of professionals who not only address physical distress, but emotional and spiritual issues as well. Hospice care is patient-centered because the needs of the patient and family drive the activities of the hospice team.

Q. Is hospice just for the last few days or weeks of life?
A. You are eligible for hospice care if you likely have 6 months or less to live (some insurers or state Medicaid agencies cover hospice for a full year). Unfortunately, most people don't receive hospice care until the final weeks or even days of life, possibly missing out on months of helpful care and quality time.
NOTE: I have personally cared for patients who went on hospice because things were looking grim but instead of passing, they actually bounced back, largely in part to the extra care they received with hospice care. I had a patient who was 98 and put on hospice after a series of falls and a case of pneumonia, she went back off hospice. She went back on hospice again, back off. This woman passed away at the the age of 103, peacefully , on hospice.

Q. Does insurance cover palliative care or hospice?
A. Many private insurance companies and health maintenance organizations (HMOs) offer palliative care and hospice benefits. Medicare (mostly for people 65 and older) offers hospice benefits, and the extra Medicare plan (Part B) offers some palliative care benefits. Medicaid coverage of hospice and palliative care for people of limited incomes varies by state.

Q. What kinds of treatment, services and therapies are offered under hospice?
A. Interdisciplinary team members supply a variety of services during routine home care, including offering necessary supplies, such as durable medical equipment, medications related to the hospice diagnosis and incidentals like diapers, bed pads, gloves, and skin protectants. Twenty-four hour on-call services must be available as needed.Typically this is provided after normal business hours by a registered nurse prepared to address urgent patient concerns. Many Palliative and Hospice programs not only offer what is considered standard treatment but also offer things such as massage therapy, music therapy, clergy.

My personal beliefs - Palliative care and hospice care are a blessing (especially for someone with a dementia diagnosis) that should be taken advantage of as early as possible. If someone has a dementia diagnosis, they will not recover from this issue. If your loved one has lost he ability to take care of their own activities of daily living (grooming, bathing, eating), have had recent hospitalizations, have had a weight loss, have lost the ability to ambulate (either walking , walking with a walker or ability to propel themselves in a wheelchair along with not being able to transferred from a bed to chair, chair to chair, etc), have problems with swallowing, incontinent - they may qualify. Contact a trusted Hospice or Palliative care group to request and assessment. At Sacred Heart Senior Living, we want our residents to be surrounded by love, expert care, all the care they need in their final days - no matter how many days they have left. No one has an expiration date stamped on their foot. If someone requires hospice care while residing at Sacred Heart, we welcome the Hospice or Palliative Care team of the families choosing. Our staff works side by side with the hospice or palliative care team to provide all the tender loving care needed, to make every day with us a blessing to them, their family and to us. Sacred Heart Senior Living's staff all believe it is an honor to provide the care they give.

Call Sacred Heart Senior Living and ask for hospice or palliative care recommendations. For more information or to attend one of our support groups, please call 610-814-2700.

_{Karen Francis}

_Consultant

_{Sacred Heart Senior Living}