![]() ![]() The Medicare Hospice Benefit affords patients four levels of care to meet their clinical needs: routine home care, general inpatient care, continuous home care, and inpatient respite care.Hospice is a special kind of care that offers comfort and support to people living with a terminal illness. While they may enter the program at any level of care, changes in their status may require a change in their level of care. In most cases, care is provided in the patient’s home but may also be provided in freestanding hospice facilities, hospitals, and nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. A patient may require differing intensities of care during the course of their disease. Support is provided to your family as well. What is Hospice Care?Ĭonsidered the model for quality compassionate care for people facing a life-limiting illness, hospice provides expert medical care, pain management, and emotional and spiritual support expressly tailored to a patient’s needs and wishes. Learn more about the MJHS Palliative Care Services. ![]() Trips to the doctor or hospital to address serious illness and symptoms have become more frequent.Need for regular help is growing due to a worsening illness.Condition continues to worsen despite the best care of medical professionals.Quality of life is suffering due to an illness.Palliative care is best for individuals whose: Consultations can happen through telehealth, too. The palliative care team works in concert with your loved one’s own doctors and does not replace any of that care. Palliative care is a specialized medical practice that focuses on managing difficult symptoms and includes complex pain management that involves administering or managing pain medications for patients with serious illness. Palliative care acts as an added support to your existing team of physicians and is given in concurrence with treatments meant to treat a disease. It can be provided at home, in hospital, or in another setting such as a nursing home. Palliative care is offered earlier in the disease process and can occur while the patient is still receiving curative treatment. The intent of palliative care is to help ease symptoms, pain, and side effects for patients while undergoing treatments for their illness. Palliative care focuses on improving quality of life and supporting the patient and their family suffering from a life-threatening or chronic illness. So, what is the difference between the two? What is Palliative Care? While there are many misconceptions, neither palliative or hospice care necessarily prolong life, nor do they hasten death. The objective of both palliative and hospice care is to improve the quality of life for a patient by offering comfort, dignity, respect and providing much-needed support to loved ones. This is why knowing the difference between palliative and hospice care and understanding which meets your loved one’s preferences is useful. As family members, we want the best for our loved ones and choosing the right care for them can make a huge difference. ![]() The spread of COVID-19 has also caused many to think more deeply about their own medical wishes, making family conversations about pain management and end-of-life care more commonplace. ![]() When caring for a loved one who is facing a significant or life-altering illness, the topic of hospice or palliative care has most likely risen. When I close my eyes, I can see my husband moving his feet and wiggling his fingers to the music that soothed his body and soul and still eases my mind.” Every single day I give thanks for my MJHS doctors, nurses and social worker, as well as for the chaplain who ministered to my husband and me, and the music therapist who played my husband’s favorite songs from the 1940s. “Dignity is very important, especially when you get to a certain age. ![]()
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