"It’s About How You Live" Video
Grateful families share their story of how
hospice brought life to their final days with
their loved ones.

View Hospice Video
(6.9 mb Quicktime file)

Hospice is a special kind of care designed for someone with a life-limiting terminal illness. The focus of hospice care is to provide pain and symptom management, emotional and spiritual support so that each patient can maintain their dignity and spend their last days in comfort. Hospice provides sensitive support for the patient's family as well. In fact, an important part of hospice is that patients and families help decide what care is right for them.

To be eligible for hospice care, the patient must have a life-limiting illness, be aware of the prognosis (probable course and outcome of the illness), and choose hospice as the desired plan of care. The primary services provided by hospice are:

• Treatment related to the life-limiting illness that is included in the hospice plan of care, plus medical equipment and supplies, services, and coordination of care
• Medications to control the pain and other symptoms of the life-limiting illness
• Hospice inpatient care (both acute care and respite care) in a hospice facility or hospital
• Home visits by hospice staff, plus skilled in-home nursing for crisis management
• Consulting physicians
• Home health aid - daily living support
• Volunteer support
• Bereavement follow-up

Pain and symptom management — control of pain and other symptoms — is the heart of the hospice philosophy. The goal of all hospice care is to provide patients and their families with relief from physical, emotional and spiritual concerns. For the patient, this can mean dealing with the symptoms that often occur during a terminal illness, such as pain, nausea and vomiting, bowel problems, shortness of breath, swelling of limbs, loss of physical control, unconsciousness, bed sores, loss of appetite, weight loss or confusion. The hospice team recognizes that each patient is an individual, with different symptoms and different needs. Hospice is responsible for helping the patient and the family achieve the goals of treatment.

Hospice is a choice, not a requirement. The patient may choose to withdraw from the hospice plan of care at any time to seek other medical treatments that may become available.

While patient care is primary, there’s more to Hospice of Little Traverse Bay than medical management of symptoms to make patients comfortable. There’s also:

• Respite time for family members
• Counseling support for families as a whole as they care for dying patients
• Support for children and grandchildren
• Meeting the emotional and psychological needs of everyone involved in the end-of-life experience.
• Spiritual care
• Homemaker support

We provide bereavement support to patients' families for 13 months following the death of their loved one. Support includes home visits, phone contact, monthly mailings and support groups. All of the Hospice support services provide a safe place for feelings to be expressed openly in a nonjudgmental setting.

Did You Know:

• Hospice is a philosophy of care, respecting the dignity and worth of each person
   
• Hospice care is available to anyone, at any age with a life limiting illness
   
• Hospice focuses on comfort rather than curative treatment
   
• Patients and families help decide what type of care is right for them – hospice is there to walk alongside and be a support system
   
• Services are provided by a team of hospice staff including nurses, home health aides, family counselors, spiritual caregivers, volunteers, therapists and physicians
   
• Once a patient chooses hospice care, all treatments, medications, medical equipment and supplies related to the life limiting illness are taken care of by the hospice
   
• Care is provided in the home, nursing home, hospital, assisted living facility or any place the patient calls home