Why Hospice in a Nursing Home?
Hospice is a special kind of care. At Hospice of Helping Hands we emphasize the patient’s quality of life by keeping them as comfortable as possible, encouraging personal choices and preserving patient dignity. Focusing our care on the whole person, we are able to provide the patient and their family the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs they undeniably deserve.
Situations when hospice is needed in the nursing facility are:
- When the physician feels the patient’s life expectancy is limited due to incurable illness.
- When a resident’s physical symptoms are not controlled.
- The resident doesn’t want to leave the facility and seek aggressive care at a hospital.
- When psychosocial issues exist.
- For example, the family is in crisis or other residents are grieving.
- When the patient has a significant deterioration in his/her physical status or weight loss of greater than 10%
When a patient begins hospice, the nursing facility and the hospice team develop a partnership to care for the patient. The nursing facility provides a 24 hour a day safe, caring and comfortable environment; while hospice provides pain control, symptom management and the expertise of their medical team.
While nursing facilities are trained to care for the elderly; hospice staff, are experts in end-of-life care.
Who pays for hospice if the patient is in the Nursing Home?
If the patient is a …
Medicaid nursing facility resident: hospice care would be paid for by Medicare.
Private pay nursing facility resident: hospice care would be paid for by Medicare.
Medicare nursing facility resident: they have to wait until their Medicare benefit is exhausted (or waived) before they can receive hospice care.
If they choose to waive their Medicare benefit for the nursing facility, Medicare will pay for hospice care. However, the cost of the nursing facility then becomes the responsibility of the family. To relieve the cost of the nursing facility the family can apply for Medicaid to pay for the nursing facility cost.
