Adult Hospice at Home

Home-based hospice care provides personalized, expert care through comprehensive medical, spiritual, emotional, and social support for the patient, caregiver, and family.  The goal is to ease the patient’s pain, while enhancing the quality of life for the patient and family.

Our experienced, highly trained staff treats the person, rather than the disease or illness.  This interdisciplinary team includes a Medical Director, registered nurses, a medical social worker, a bereavement team, spiritual counselors, trained volunteers and home-care aides.  The team is highly skilled at helping families cope with the many issues that arise at the end of life.  They counsel the patient, caregiver, and family on important decisions, chief among them whether home-based care makes sense, and how best to manage pain.  Families also have the support of caring volunteers who can perform household tasks, support patients and families, or simply hold a hand or listen.

Hospice care is appropriate when a person can no longer benefit from curative treatment and life expectancy is about 6 months.  The patient, family, and physician must collectively decide when hospice services should begin.

If a patient’s condition improves or the disease goes into remission, the patient can be discharged from the hospice program and return to outpatient treatment, as appropriate.  If necessary, hospice care may be resumed at a later time.

The hospice-at-home team is made up of:

  • Registered nurses
  • Medical social workers
  • Physical and occupational therapists, speech pathologists
  • Nutritionists
  • Chaplains
  • Licensed practical nurses
  • Certified nurse aides
  • Volunteers
  • Medical Director

Hospice-at-home services include:

  • Symptom/pain management
  • Physical, occupational, speech therapy
  • Medical, social assessment
  • Family counseling
  • Personal care/homemaking assistance
  • Respite to give family time for renewal
  • Bereavement support for family
  • Medical equipment, supplies, medications
  • Medical laboratory services
  • Dietary advice
  • Spiritual guidance
  • Financial guidance

Home-based service also provides patients with complementary and holistic services, including therapeutic massage, expressive art activities, music therapy, pet visits, and expressive puppetry.  These modalities, provided by trained staff and volunteers, can offer the psychological lift that’s needed to bring comfort at the end of life.