What Is Hospice: The Hospice Concept

In its earliest origins, in the Middle Ages, Hospice was a place of shelter for travelers on a difficult journey. In modern times, hospice has come to mean a concept of care for patients, families, caregivers, and friends facing a life-limiting illness.

Today, hospice care is provided by a physician-directed, nurse-coordinated, and volunteer-supported team of professionals who are committed to be with patients, caregivers, and family members facing a life-limiting illness so that they will not be alone and will not suffer from unmanaged symptoms during their end-of-life struggles.

Often people think of home care when they think of hospice, and in many ways it is that, and more.

Hospice is an innovation in care built upon the concept of individual choice, and one of the choices hospice provides is the ability for a patient with a life-limiting illness to stay at home (in their residential setting) surrounded by family and friends.

Hospice's team of specially trained professionals and volunteers work with the patient's doctor to provide a plan of care woven with the dignity of choice and power of love.

Making no attempt to hasten or delay death, Hospice focuses on controlling the patient's pain and symptoms, while helping family and friends cope with the stress and emotions a life-limiting illness can bring. In hospice, something else can always be done! Hospice honors a patient's advanced directives.

From the first days of a life-limiting illness to long past the loss of a loved one, Hospice offers a mainstay of resources and respite, help and hope to affirm a meaningful quality of life for all at the journey's end.

The Hospice Bereavement Program provides aftercare for family members and caregivers for a year after the death of a patient. Bereavement services help re-establish a balance after suffering the loss of a loved one.

Hospice is truly one of the most creative innovations in American Healthcare history.  It was the first American healthcare experiment with a pre-paid benefit.  It was the first paid benefit to include family members and patients as the "unit of care." It was the first benefit to pay for services to family members when it incorporated respite care in the benefit.  Hospice's bereavement services were the first American healthcare benefit paid for after the death of a patient. Hospice is also very cost-justified.  For every dollar spent on hospice services the Medicare Trust saves over twice that amount.

What Is Hospice: The Hospice Promise

Hospice promises confidential comfort and care, compassion and counseling when it's needed most and help patients remain where they most want to be—whether in a long-term care facility, in-patient residence or at home.

Hospice promises to affirm the power of choice and preserve a quality of life in every way possible.

Hospice promises to address the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of patients and their families, with a deep respect for the patient's wishes at the heart of it all.

Hospice promises to be there, to help and to care.

What Is Hospice: Hospice Philosophy and Goals

Hospice philosophy respects the rights of patient and family. It offers the right to enjoy the highest quality of life possible:

• The right to die with dignity, as dignity is perceived by the patient.


• The right to actively participate in managing the remaining life span, the dying process and the event of death.


• The right to remain a viable family member in the environment of choice.


• The right to have his/her needs considered on a personal, individual basis.

Hospice strives to achieve excellence in its set objectives:

• Good physical care and relief of pain and other symptoms during illness without great mental or physical incapacitation.


• Ongoing emotional support of patients and family caregivers throughout illness.


• Support of the patient's participation as an active family member by enabling them to remain at home and by offering services to accommodate family relationships.


• Assistance to the patient and the family in working through the grieving process and other issues involved in serious illness, changes in lifestyle and loss.


• Assistance with the family's healthy resolution of bereavement issues up to a year or more after the death of the patient as needed.


• Initiation and maintenance of an ongoing community Hospice education program to keep hospice available to the families, friends and neighbors of our community.