Last Updated on June 19, 2024 by Frank Davis
As a hospice, our main role is to provide comfort and dignity to your loved one while creating a holistic environment for them. Hospice care is intended to improve the quality of life of its patients by controlling pain and symptoms. We provide services by a team of professionals which include a physician, nurses, therapists, counselors, home health aides, and volunteers.
If you are not familiar with hospice care, you may be nervous or anxious, not knowing what you should expect. By learning what to expect, you may feel more at ease. In this article, we will discuss in detail the steps required to help set up hospice care.
1) Be Prepared
Before making a call, it is important to make sure that you have the proper paperwork. Having this information at hand would make the whole call a lot smoother, rather than having to call back to retrieve information. The following are a few things you may need before you get started:
- Make sure you have Medicare or your insurance information available
- Ensure you have the full name and date of birth of your loved ones
- Take some time to learn about the patient’s conditions
- Obtain from your doctor a prescription for hospice care if possible
- If emotions are overwhelming, give yourself a moment to calm down
2) Get in Touch With the Hospice Agency
Once you have prepared yourself for the conversation with the hospice representative, the next step is to make the call. An experienced nurse from our team will assist you when you call; they will typically ask questions about that individual’s health, what’s your plan in place, etc. Normally, the nurses will ask you the following questions:
- The patient’s diagnosis and a brief overview of the patient’s condition
- The city in which the patient lives is the first question we ask them, so that we can be sure they reside within our service area
- Is there any intention on the patient’s part to pursue treatment
- Would the patient prefer to have hospice care at home or in an inpatient setting
- Can we schedule a time for a nurse to meet with you so that we can go over the paperwork
3) Admissions Meeting
In most cases, a registered nurse will be the one to meet with you. Keep in mind that we work around your schedule. A nurse will be available at any time that is convenient for you during normal business hours. There will be several topics discussed at the admissions meeting, including:
- Get more information about hospice services and get answers to your questions
- Take a moment to go over your Medicare and insurance information
- Assess the patient’s overall health conditions
- The family can choose to enroll in the hospice care program if they agree
4) Hospice Equipment and Services
After the admissions meeting, services for your loved one usually begin within a day or two. Depending on the urgency of the situation, we could set up and start providing services that same day. There are a few things that you must do in order to begin hospice care:
- It is important to have enough space for medical equipment (hospital beds, oxygen equipment, wheelchairs, walkers, etc.)
- Take safety precautions, such as removing tripping hazards, as well as getting a nightlight, to avoid accidents
- It is a good idea to provide chairs for visitors
- Create a documentation area, where all of your medical documents will be kept in a neat and tidy manner, in order to provide safe and easy access to them
Conclusion
After you have gone over all the steps that are required to set up hospice care, you will notice that it is not that difficult. In some ways, many of the things we discussed you probably already knew about or already had an idea about. Making the decision to make that call is perhaps the most important step. You begin hospice service with your own inquiry; it all begins with your own desire. We believe that hospice care is about being there for our loved ones when they need us most. To learn more about our hospice care, please call our helpline at (747) 755-5181.
