Hospice vs Palliative Care: Differences & Which to Choose

When you or a loved one are faced with a life-threatening illness or condition, you may be presented with the option of beginning some form of palliative care.

Palliative care, loosely, refers to care that is focused on treating symptoms and discomfort that result from a serious illness. This can include relief from comorbidities, pain management, and prescriptions that help relieve mental health conditions like anxiety or depression.

If the illness is expected to result in death within a matter of six months or less, a different type of palliative care may be required. This care is known as hospice care, and it is used to provide end-of-life care for the hospice patient.

So while the terms “hospice” vs “palliative care” are often used interchangeably, these are two distinct types of medical treatment. Hospice care could actually be described as a type of palliative care, since hospice care focuses on the last few months of life, while palliative care can begin as soon as there is a diagnosis of a serious illness, and can be used alongside curative treatment. The difference between hospice and palliative care is really one of anticipated duration rather than what kind of comfort is provided.

In deciding on hospice vs palliative care, you will need to have a good understanding of the diagnosis and prognosis, as well as being advised by what the doctor believes.

Hospice Vs Palliative Care: Overlapping Treatment Options

Choosing between hospice and palliative care may seem like a difficult decision, but the specifics of your situation may make the choice fairly simple.

Hospice care is only an option for those in the final stages of life when further curative treatment is no longer effective. Palliative care, however, is intended to work hand in hand with curative treatment and to provide comfort from the more difficult aspects of illness. Both provide comfort and may last until the end of life, but hospice care is only used in situations where the patient is not expected to recover or to survive more than six months.

The choice between hospice and palliative care really comes down to a question of your prognosis and will need to be discussed with your physicians and specialists.

Palliative Care: Symptom Relief During Serious Illness

The diagnosis of a serious illness brings a cascade of decisions, discomforts, and difficulties.

Treatment options abound, from aggressive use of medicine and surgical options to more laid-back approaches.

A major component of all serious illness diagnoses, however, is the use of palliative care.

Curative treatments and surgeries often result in side effects and health problems of their own. Palliative care can work alongside these treatments, relieving the symptoms they cause as well as the symptoms of the disease itself.

In addition, palliative care refers to any care intended to relieve discomfort from a disease that is currently untreated. Some people with a cancer diagnosis, for example, choose not to undergo aggressive treatment like chemotherapy or surgery, but rather to let the illness run its course. They may have several years to live before end-of-life care is needed; the care they receive in the interim is also classified as palliative care.

And finally, hospice care is technically a form of palliative care as well, meaning that choosing hospice care is also choosing palliative care. Hospice and palliative care overlap in key areas and can be viewed as two parts of an overall care plan for comfort in hard times.

Hospice Care: Comfort and Stability in End-of-Life Care

When the doctor believes that the patient has six months or less to live and that further treatments for the terminal illness are no longer going to be effective, hospice care becomes an option for the patient.

In hospice care, the patient is kept comfortable with equipment, pharmaceuticals, and treatments that help make end-of-life care as easy and painless as possible.

While hospice care can take place in a hospital or nursing home setting, it can also take place in the home of the patient or a loved one. A hospice care provider can offer support and training that family and loved ones need in order to keep the patient comfortable, allowing the patient to stay in familiar surroundings and see their loved ones every day in their last months of life.

When entering hospice and palliative care, the patient and their family are in a very difficult and frightening time of life. There is enough to worry about between diagnoses, prognoses, and the patient’s comfort; they should not have to be worried about whether insurance will cover their hospice care expenses.

And the way hospice care coverage is arranged, based on the doctor’s prognosis, ensures that there needn’t be any fear on that count.

The medicare hospice benefit allows all these services to be covered by the patient’s insurance, freeing the family caregivers from the need to do without needed resources for the patient’s comfort. Hospice and palliative care at the end of life are a difficult concept to approach, but once you understand the limitations on hospice care coverage, the choice becomes much less frightening.

Limitations of Hospice Care

When your doctors have agreed on a prognosis that does not anticipate more than six months of continued survival, hospice care becomes available.

This can happen when the patient’s disease is considered terminal even with treatment, or when the patient chooses to forego conventional treatment.

Some people are afraid to enter hospice care because they worry that they will live longer than six months and incur costs, but in reality, the medicare hospice benefit will cover hospice care no matter how long the patient lives–as long as the doctors still consider them to be in the end of life stage.

And, if remission is achieved and the doctors extend the prognosis to more than six months of life, the patient can simply be removed from hospice care. There is no fraud accusation for having entered hospice care and not actually died in the expected time frame. When it comes to hospice care, good news is good news.

Compassionate Care: Hospice and Palliative Care In Life’s Great Challenges

Whether the patient requires hospice vs palliative care, their comfort at the end of life should be the focus of all of their palliative care team. When hospice and palliative care are coordinated with the loving family of the patient, everyone benefits.

The patient is able to have all the resources that are needed to ease the transition to the end of their life, and the family has the support and funding they need through Medicare in order to meet the patient’s needs without making unnecessary financial sacrifices.

While the decision of hospice vs. palliative care may seem difficult, in reality, both deal with the comfort of a patient under difficult circumstances, and both help family and loved ones be able to provide the care they need. Hospice care makes the end of life much easier for everyone involved, allowing everyone in the patient’s life to focus on enjoying their remaining time with their loved one.