Page 138 - South Mississippi Living - November, 2022

GOLDEN YEARS
November is national Home Care and Hospice Month. While these two types of care seem similar, they have different
purposes for you or your loved one.
story by Victoria Snyder
BOTH:
• Patients can stay in their home for treatment.
• Care must be started by a doctor’s order.
• These services are designed to avoid hospitalization. The care they provide will end if the patient is hospitalized.
• Both provide pain and symptom management.
• Treatment can continue as long as eligibility for the service is met.
HOSPICE:
HOME HEALTH:
The main goal is to help you or your loved one get better from an illness
or injury so that the patient can become as self-sufficient as possible again. You or your loved one must be homebound to receive care. The main focus of the team is the patient and them getting better. Home health care can provide:
• Wound care
• Nutrition therapy
• Monitoring of illness
• Physical and occupational therapy • Speech therapy
• Care coordination
Don’t view hospice as giving up – it’s meant to help the patient have the best quality of life they can. The main goal is to help you or your loved one remain comfortable and out of pain. The focus is caring, not curing. Hospice is only recommended by a doctor when the patient has a prognosis of six months or less left to live as their terminal illness runs its course. While, of course, the care is focused on the patient, the family is not excluded from the emotional help that hospice workers and volunteers offer. Hospice care provides:
• Psychosocial and spiritual support because hospice teams include social workers and spiritual advisors alongside medical personnel
• 24/7 care if needed
• Patient can leave the home
It is possible that home health care can progress into a need for hospice if the illness progresses too far. Talk to you or your loved
one’s doctor to consider all of your options.
138 | November 2022
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