When your loved one is sick with a chronic or terminal illness, it’s a difficult time for everyone involved. You have to start thinking about getting them some professional care, but what type is right? What do they qualify for? The team at Suncrest Home Health and Hospice of Phoenix explain your options to you below.
What Is Long-Term Care?
Many people have heard of long-term care, but what, exactly, is it? Long-term care is most often used as a synonym for nursing home care. As you may be aware, some nursing home residents live there for many years, while some are there mere days. The average nursing home stay is about two years, but this varies widely and depends on many factors.
Therefore, although we call nursing home care “long-term” care, we don’t have a specific definition for it. What may seem long-term to some may not seem so to others.
Oftentimes when we read obituaries in newspapers, they say the subject died “after a long illness.” Frequently this means cancer, but it can mean hundreds of other illnesses as well. It could be an illness they battled their entire lives, such as cerebral palsy, or one they were diagnosed with later in life, such as Parkinson’s disease.
Is Hospice Care Long Term?
In the field of hospice care, we think of hospice as short term by definition. Patients are only allowed to enter hospice care if they are expected to live six months or less.
The bottom line is that the definitions of long- and short-term care, while somewhat nebulous, are important when you are searching for the right type of care for your loved one. Hospice is only available to patients who have abandoned life-saving treatment and have a doctor’s diagnosis of six months or less to live.
In hospice, we provide comfort care such as medication for pain and emotional needs, including antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds. But patients do not get lifesaving treatments such as chemotherapy, dialysis or insulin injections.
What Is Palliative Care?
If you are unsure of your loved one’s prognosis, the first step to take is to talk to their doctor. If their doctor believes they will live at least six months more, hospice is not for them. If you want to keep your loved one at home while they receive treatment for their condition, you may ask for help receiving palliative care.
Palliative care is similar to hospice in that it provides patients physical and emotional comfort, but palliative care is available to patients still receiving treatment for their condition, while hospice is not.
Suncrest Can Help Your Family
Many families are unable to care for patients adequately at home when they are battling illnesses such as COPD, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer or another serious chronic or acute illness. In these instances, long-term care is a good choice. Residents of long-term care facilities get the meds and treatment they need, and you can arrange for the to receive palliative care as well.
If their condition deteriorates significantly and death seems imminent, you may opt to place your relative in hospice care at that time.
For help understanding what kind of care your relative in Phoenix needs to stay comfortable, talk to the hospice nurses at Suncrest Home Health and Hospice today.
