Hospice Myths & Urban Legends Busted
Almost everyone has someone in their life who has been touched by hospice care, but if this is your first time actually navigating it, you might have a few misconceptions. There’s a lot hospice is and a lot hospice isn’t.
Myth 1: Hospice causes patients to die sooner
Many people think that when a patient goes on hospice, they’re given morphine, then they die. This is unequivocally false. Hospice neither hastens death nor extends life. It simply provides comfort for the time the patient has left.
However, hospice isn’t about the “how long” of a patient’s end of life, but rather, “how good” that time can be. Hospice care doesn’t seek to cure the patient’s terminal illness, but to maximize the quality of their remaining days.
Often, hospice interventions result in a longer lifespan than non-hospice patients. These include managing symptoms to make patients more comfortable, as well as bringing resolution to emotional, spiritual, and familial conflicts the patient may have.
Myth 2: Opting for hospice care means the patient is giving up
This is an incredibly reductive way to view end-of-life care. Hospice patients usually begin care after having exhausted all other options. By definition, they’ve been given a prognosis of six months or less to live.
Oftentimes, hospice care gives patients more control over their remaining life. Hospice can spare them from curative treatments that might be debilitating and draining, and it can allow patients to spend more time in the comfort of their home, with their families and those near and dear to them.
Death is inevitable, and accepting death isn’t giving up. Hospice isn’t the end of care, it’s the start of a new kind of care that allows the patient to prioritize what life is all about in the first place.
Myth 3: Hospice is just for cancer patients
Not true. While many hospice patients do suffer from cancer, any terminal illness can qualify for hospice. That includes ALS, Alzheimer’s and dementia, COPD and lung disease, heart disease, HIV/AIDS, liver disease, coma, stroke, Parkinson’s disease, kidney disease, sepsis, and others.
Myth 4: Hospice is just for the elderly
Hospice is for anyone, of any age, who is facing an end-stage terminal illness — including teens and young adults. Common hospice diagnoses for younger patients include cancer, HIV/AIDS, liver disease or cirrhosis, and others.
Myth 5: Hospice care is expensive
Medicare, Medi-Cal, and private insurance all have hospice benefit programs. The vast majority of hospice patients receive hospice through Medicare’s hospice benefit, which can cover up to 100% of all care related to the patient’s terminal illness.
From a multi-disciplinary team to hospice nurses and doctors to medical equipment and supplies, you might be surprised at how much Medicare covers.
You can see it all here.
Myth 6: For hospice, the patient has to live in a certain place
Not true. Hospice is not a place, it’s a service. Hospice comes to the patient wherever a patient calls home. This can be a private residence, assisted living facility, board and care, a skilled nursing facility, an in-patient at a hospital, a homeless shelter, or somewhere else.
Myth 7: Hospice provides 24-hour care
Not quite. Many people’s mental picture of hospice is a nurse who never leaves the patient’s side. This isn’t what Routine Hospice care consists of.
From a multi-disciplinary team to hospice nurses and doctors to medical equipment and supplies, you might be surprised at how much Medicare covers.
For patients receiving hospice care at home, family members will provide the bulk of daily caregiving. For patients receiving hospice at a facility, daily care will be administered by that facility’s regular staff.
While specialists will tend to the patient regularly and as needed, they are not constant attendants. That said, the hospice team is on call 24/7, every day of the week in case an emergency arises or you have general caregiving questions.
Myth 8: Once you enter hospice, there’s no going back
Not true. Hospice isn’t some binding contract. Patients and families reserve the right to revoke their hospice benefit at any time and may resume hospice at a later date, no problem.
Hospice is for patients who decide it’s best to let their terminal illness take its natural course, so they cease efforts at curing that illness. But if the patient changes their mind, it’s no problem to stop hospice care and resume curative treatments. Some patients might even plateau, stabilize, or receive an extended prognosis that indicates death is not imminent enough for hospice care. In these instances or circumstances, the hospice team may even initiate a discharge.
Patients often pause hospice care and re-enter hospice at a later time. There’s no penalty or fee associated with going off of hospice care.
Myth 9: Hospice can only last for six months
This is false. Though a patient only qualifies for hospice when their doctor gives them a prognosis of six months or less to live, patients often end up living longer than their prognosis. In that case, hospice care continues as usual for the rest of the patient’s life, so long as they continue to decline along a terminal trajectory.
In fact, hospice care doesn’t even end when the patient dies. Hospice care continues to serve the deceased patient’s family members for a year after the death, providing spiritual and emotional counseling to the patient’s loved ones through bereavement support and grief counseling.
Myth 10: Once in hospice, the patient can never go to the hospital or see their normal doctor.
Not exactly. Only curative care treatments are halted.
Most care or services a patient could receive before entering hospice, they can receive while in hospice. The only difference is that once enrolled in hospice, the hospice team coordinates and delivers virtually all of your care. Hospital or inpatient stays must be coordinated with a hospice-contracted hospital or inpatient facility for pain control or acute symptom management which can’t be done in other settings.
Patients can see their regular family doctor as long as that doctor has been designated as the patient’s attending physician. In that case, the doctor is in the loop with the hospice plan of care.
Why In the Arms of Grace Hospice?
IAGH is a family-owned and operated boutique hospice serving the communities of Los Angeles and its surrounding counties. We believe that while hospice may be a difficult time in one’s life, it certainly doesn’t have to be the worst. Our team goes above and beyond to help patients and families gain dignity, peace, and resolution in the face of loss.