Who Provides Hospice Care?

Hospice is not a place, but the name for the management of symptoms and pain often associated with end-of-life care. Hospice care provides medical services, emotional support, and spiritual resources for people who are in the last stages of a serious illness, such as cancer or heart failure. 

Hospice care also helps family members manage the practical details and emotional challenges of caring for dying loves one. The Hospice team supports the patient, the family, and the caregivers. 

Most of the time, hospice care is provided in your home. Typically, a family member or loved one will look after you or your loved one much of the time. And someone from your hospice team will likely visit for an hour or so one or more times a week. Your loved ones will work with the hospice team to give you the best care possible.  

The goal of hospice treatment is to keep you or your loved one comfortable and improve your quality of life while in the dying process. This philosophy is a shift from usual medical treatments, in which health professionals strive to cure your disease. 

Hospice services are not intended to speed up or prolong the dying process. They focus instead on relieving pain and other symptoms. Hospice caregivers are concerned with enhancing the quality of remaining life by keeping you or your loved one as alert and comfortable as possible in a familiar environment with family and friends. 

Hospice services are available for individuals who have been diagnosed with an incurable disease or with a life-limiting prognosis. These illnesses may be cancerous diagnosis include; Cardiovascular, Pulmonary, Renal and liver Diseases, Dementia, CVA, and Failure to Thrive.

The patient's primary physician and St. Mary's Hospice Medical Director, must authorize the start of care under the hospice benefit when life expectancy is estimated at 6 months or less.