1. Six months or less to live
2. Dr. certifies #1
3. Give up treatment plans
4. Pay if they can
As far as I know, only one doctor needs to certify a patient for hospice, and it can be the patients doctor that does this. I've work with hospice for 20 years, and in that 20 years I've never heard that it took two doctors or just the medical director with hospice to certify a patient to be enrolled in the hospice care program. The patient does hwoever need to be deemed terminal for the hospice care program to be considered.
Unfortunately this has nothing to do with Hospice itself. These are the guidelines that the insurance companies set. As unfortunate as it is and as bad as it sounds, they do it because hospice care is quite costly.
Visit frequency for a social worker in hospice is determined by the doctor's order on the patient's plan of care.
Hospice care is an inpatient treatment. Palliative care is a method of giving "comfort" care to improve the quality of life for a patient for their remaining weeks/months/years and can be administered at home or in a clinical environment.
Again, hospice is not a place, but rather a term to describe the type of care that is received by such patients. There are hospice facilities, hospice care wards within a nursing home or or hospital; and hospice care staff who provide hospice care in a patient's home or other location.
Basically, a patient's care in hospice is geared towards comfort and improvement of the quality of life during those final months or days.
Homeowners insurance will not cover care for patient, but hospice has contracts with agencies that will help in the situation described. Contact the hospice nurse for help.
Hospice care for terminal lung or liver cancer patients should focus on keeping the patient as pain-free as possible. Care should be taken to enhance the patient's quality of life, and facilitate as many good days as the patient has possible.
Before I use such a sentence, let me clarify what the word hospice is. Hospice is actually an adjective and a noun when used as a proper noun, describing what type of care a person will receive. An example of one such sentence is: the doctor gave the terminally ill patient a referral for hospice care.
Hospice of Cincinnati provides care for those that are considered to be not long for this world. They provide comfort care, talking with the patients, providing basic medical care, and doing whatever they can to allow comfort in the patient's hour of need.
Since the patient and his or her family members are considered the unit of care, hospice programs continue to support families and loved ones after the patient's death.
Hospice care can take place at home, a nursing home, or hospice house.