Angela Hospice

At any time during a life-limiting illness it is appropriate to consider all of a patient’s care options, including hospice. By law the decision belongs to the patient. Hospice care is premium quality comfort care specifically for patients with a terminal illness. The essential criteria for electing hospice care are: A physician and hospice medical director’s certification that a patient is terminally ill -and- If the terminal illness runs its natural course, life expectancy is six months or less Many physicians are concerned about the difficulty predicting a six-month life expectancy. As a result, a majority of patients are referred to hospice care when actual life expectancy is only weeks or days (a period many physicians feel they can more easily judge). Although all patients receiving hospice care experience high quality comfort care as soon as hospice begins, those patients receiving it at a more advanced point in their disease do not receive as many of the benefits of hospice care as those referred earlier in the progression of disease. Perhaps this is the reason recent studies have shown that patients who receive hospice care earlier in their diagnosis typically live longer and more pain free lives than those who receive it later. For more information on this subject, visit our website and see our page When is it Time for Hospice.

Hospice care is received wherever the patient is living. Hospice care can take place in a patient’s home, a nursing home, assisted living facility, independent living facility, hospital, group home, or the Angela Hospice Care Center.