November is National Home Care & Hospice Month

Posted in General

During November, the National Association for Home Care (NAHC) encourages all communities to celebrate National Home Care and Hospice Month, honoring the many nurses, therapists and social workers who make a difference for the patients and families they care for.

Home care is medical care that is appropriate for people suffering from chronic illness, following surgery, or recovering from acute injury or illness and want to remain at home. Home care gives someone the ability to recuperate in the place they feel most comfortable while receiving the treatment and assistance needed from skilled healthcare professionals. This can include wound care, medication management, and physical therapy, to name a few. In order to receive home health care, the patient’s physician must certify that they meet the eligibility requirements and they also must meet the Medicare Homebound Status Criteria, meaning the patient only leaves home infrequently, and it is very difficult to do so.

When serious illness strikes, whatever the diagnosis, palliative care helps to provide patients with relief from symptoms, pain and stress. Palliative care is appropriate at any age and at any stage in a serious illness and can be provided along with curative treatment.

When medical care can no longer offer a cure, hospice care focuses on providing patients with comfort, dignity and quality of life as the end of life draws near. Hospice is not about giving up hope, but instead about new hope. It’s about carrying out an individual’s wishes at end of life while controlling symptoms and pain. It’s about maximizing a patient’s time with loved ones before they pass on. It’s about providing emotional, spiritual and social support to patients and their families. Like home care, hospice care is a benefit of Medicare and most private insurers as long as the patient continues to meet the necessary criteria. Home Health & Hospice Care provides hospice in patients’ homes, skilled nursing facilities and in our own 10-bed Community Hospice House.

Home care, hospice care and palliative care are all part of the continuum of services provided by Home Health & Hospice Care. HHHC also owns and operates the Community Hospice House in Merrimack, New Hampshire.