What is Hospice Care?

Hospice is care that assists with pain management while providing emotional and spiritual support to our patients and their families.  Our Interdisciplinary team designs individualized care plans to enable our patients to choose how they will spend their final days. Care plans are created to focus on each patient’s individual needs rather than the generic symptoms of illness.  Hospice promotes family-centered care by allowing patients, their families and as requested, Care Givers, in the decision-making process.  Mission Hospice offers care plans for patients in the home, a skilled nursing facility or a residential care facility (RCFE).

Hospice care is appropriate when curative treatments are no longer beneficial or desired.  At Mission Hospice, we also provide palliative care, which is designed to help or manage any uncomfortable symptoms; while not curative, its main purpose is to improve our patients’ quality of life.  The patient, family and doctor work together to decide when, and if, hospice and/or palliative care are a viable option.

In many cases, hospice care is not started soon enough. Patients, family members and even sometimes doctors, may resist looking to hospice if they feel it may appear that they are losing hope. However, this could not be further from the truth. Diseases can go into remission or stabilize and the patient can be discharged from our service; if needed, patients can be enrolled into hospice at a later time. All in all, hospice has the ability to create hope for our patients, their families and their loved ones by celebrating each day and doing things to improve quality of life.