Resources: Hospice
What is Hospice?
Hospice provides something more for patients when a cure is not possible. It is medical care focused on providing comfort for people with a life expectancy of six months or less when symptom management and quality of life are the primary goals.
- Hospice care is person-centered. It is most often delivered where the patient resides by a team of professionals trained to address the patient’s physical, psychosocial, and spiritual needs. It also provides support to families and unpaid caregivers.
- Hospice care is a Medicare benefit. All Medicare and Medicare Advantage enrollees have a right to hospice care.
- Hospice care is not 24/7 bedside care. It does not replace nursing home care, and it does not hasten death.
Hospice Foundation of America
Hospice care is medical care focused on the patient’s quality of life when curative options have been exhausted. It is most beneficial when care begins early, even months before death is expected.
When is it time for hospice care?
- Treatment is no longer effective or desired
- Health has declined significantly
- Quality of life is now the primary focus
Hospice Nurse Julie Answers All of your Frequently Asked Questions about Hospice Care
Clear, easy-to-understand answers to many of the questions that arise about Hospice.
The Difference Between Hospice Care and Palliative Care
In broad terms, palliative care is any treatment or intervention intended to control pain or other distressing symptoms. In the context of hospice, palliative care focuses on quality of life rather than curing disease. All hospice care is palliative in that the focus is on controlling distressing symptoms, but not all palliative care includes hospice.
https://hospicefoundation.org/the-difference-between-hospice-care-and-palliative-care/
EvergreenHealth Hospice Care Center
At EvergreenHealth Hospice Care, we do more than simply provide medical care for the terminally ill. We are focused on empowering you to make the most of each day. Hospice Care is comfort-focused, including pain and symptom management as well as emotional and spiritual support for patients and their loved ones.
Hospice services are provided where the person resides including private residences, independent and assisted living facilities, adult family homes, or at EvergreenHealth’s Gene and Irene Wockner Hospice Care Center in Kirkland WA. EvergreenHealth Hospice serves all of King and Snohomish Counties.
https://www.evergreenhealth.com/health-services/hospice-care/
Become a Hospice Volunteer with EvergreenHealth Hospice
As a volunteer, you are an integral member of the hospice care team and help support patients and their families at the hospice care center in Kirkland, WA or in their homes throughout King and Snohomish Counties, in the Puget Sound Region of Western Washington.
What would I do as a hospice volunteer?
It’s the simple act of just showing up that can make a difference. You might hold a hand, watch television, listen to music or sing old songs, cook a meal, do some light housekeeping, listen to someone’s life story, run errands, go for a walk or wheelchair stroll or give an exhausted caregiver a short break.
https://www.evergreenhealth.com/health-services/hospice-care/
