The Move to Hospice Care

Palliative Care and Hospice Care Differences

Palliative care and hospice care are both providers of care for patients with illnesses that are fatal. Two types of care providers to supplement some of the more traditional care options. Their protocols call for patients to receive a combined approach where medications, day-to-day care, equipment, bereavement counseling, and symptoms treatment are administered through a single program. However, no matter how similar palliative care and hospice care are, there are still differences between the two: location, timing, and treatment.

Palliative care is delivered mostly in an institutionalized location, such as a hospital, extended care facility, or nursing home. The institution where palliative care is administered must be associated with the palliative care team because the team is composed of doctors, nurses, and other professional medical caregivers. They will be the ones who will administer or oversee most of the ongoing comfort-care patients received. Meanwhile, hospice care is administered in the home by a team of hospice professionals. Hospice often relies upon the family caregiver, as well as a visiting hospice nurse.

There are no time restrictions for palliative care. The patient can receive palliative care any time, at any stage of the illness, whether it be terminal or not. On the other hand, hospice care is only given to patients who have a certification from a physician that they are terminally ill. Hospice care takes patients whose life expectancy is only six months or less.

Palliative care also administers treatments to patients ranging from conservative to aggressive/curative. Life-prolonging therapies will not be avoided and the palliative care team will do anything and everything to save the patient’s life. Meanwhile, hospice care treatments concentrate on comfort. Curing the patient is no longer the goal. Instead, hospice care makes sure to provide comfort to patients for the remaining days of their lives.

Palliative care and hospice care are very similar when it comes to providing care for dying people.

New Hospice Care

Two of the most terrifying words one wishes never to listen to are “terminal illness”, especially in regards to yourself or a family member. This is usually followed by a variety of confusing choices that need to be taken like the right doctor, hospice care, insurance issues and confounding medical terms, none of them easy or simple. Pearland-based Altus Healthcare Management Services is stepping in to complete the needs of the critically ill in Sugar Land by starting a new medical center with an in-patient unit in roughly 8 months. The term “hospice” represents a support that provides medicines, equipment, medical center services and additional help, either in the comfort of your home or at an inpatient unit, when life span is about 6 months or less. Sufferers are referred by their doctors to a medical center and the support is usually covered by Medical health insurance.

Altus Health was established in 2004 with a novel idea of “empowering physicians”. In short, it allows doctors to get and become associates at their facilities and once functional, doctors focus on practicing medication and looking after patients while ZT Wealth, manage the day to day management, promotion and cash management. Altus has had a good run starting several hospice care services, imaging, surgery and sleep facilities in Texas, utilizing over 800 individuals and producing $150 million of earnings. Altus’ strength can be found in being patient focused and making a plan of care that is designed to the unique needs of the patient and their family. This is supervised by a care group of experienced doctors who work in combination with the individual’s primary doctor to ensure that the patient gets the best possible care.

Former Mayor Dave Wallace, now a Board Member of Altus Healthcare, described by Gaj as “one of the best individuals to have in your corner”, said he was grateful of the tasks the service would make and the healthcare it would offer for the citizens of Sugar Land. “Detractors may grumble that the wheels of the Government are not turning quick enough,” Wallace said, yet I believe that the “City of Sugar Land is the best oiled machine there is.”

Although most individuals would want to die quietly in a relaxed establishment, a new research reveals that almost one in three spend some time in the intensive-care unit of a hospital in their last month of life, while a similar number only get hospice care a few days before passing away. And 40 percent of those late hospice care recommendations come right after an ICU stay, the researchers mentioned. “People end up with these very brief stays in hospice care,” said research writer Dr. Joan Teno, a lecturer of health services, plan and practice at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School, in Providence, R.I. “Those brief stays are difficult on the sufferers and the family members. They don’t benefit from hospice’s psychosocial assistance for sufferers and their loved ones.”

Another professional put it this way: “I think what has occurred is that we’re using hospice care as a last resort. It’s something we do when individuals have gotten so bad that they can’t reply to any possible involvement,” said Dr. Mary Tinetti, chief of geriatrics and lecturer of internal medicine and public health at the Yale University School of Medicine and Yale New Haven Hospital. “Hospice care should be used as a treatment for those who are targeted on total well being,” said Tinetti, who is also the co-author of an article associated with the research. “Some individuals are going to want to have access to modern care prior to the process.”

The research analyzed a unique sample of 20 % of fee-for-service Medicare recipients who passed away in 2000, 2005 and 2009. Each year, fewer individuals passed away in the medical center, according to the research. In 2000, 32.6 % passed away in the medical center. In 2005, 26.9 % passed away under hospice care and 24.6 % did so during 2009. At one time, however, the use of the intensive-care unit in the last 30 days of life increased for every time frame. In 2000, 24.3 % of individuals were in the ICU in their last month. By 2005, that number was 26.3 %, and during 2009, it had increased to 29.2 %.