Hospice Care
The staff of the Schulman and Schachne Institute are proud to announce the creation of a hospice program in collaboration with well-known area hospice providers. It offers an alternative care option for patients with life-limiting illnesses and when a decision has been made not to pursue aggressive or curative options. Hospice inpatient care is appropriate when a patient's symptoms cannot be managed in a residential setting. Hospice inpatient services may be the best and only option when aggressive treatment of a patient is no longer warranted.
Services are provided for short-term care to manage acute symptoms, adjust medications or to stabilize residential situations. The facility may be used if there is no primary caregiver, or if the patient needs medical attention that cannot be given at home. It can also be used to provide respite care to a patient in the outpatient or home hospice to relieve the patient's primary caregiver and family members on a temporary basis, usually up to five days.
Respite philosophy of care stresses palliative, rather than curative, treatment and provides a multidisciplinary approach that focuses on pain and symptom control and addresses psychological, social and spiritual issues around the end-of-life process. Hospice uses pain and symptom control enabling the patient to live as fully and comfortably as possible. Hospice treats the person not the disease. The interdisciplinary Hospice team is made up of professionals and volunteers who address the comprehensive needs of the patient and family, in order to increase their quality of life at the end of life.
Hospice focuses on the unique needs of patients and their families
- Physical needs: for many patients, relieving pain through medication is an important part of hospice care
- Social needs: eating favorite foods, listening to music, sharing time with family and friends, being well-groomed, having help with financial needs
- Emotional needs: hospice helps patients cope with loneliness, isolation and fear of dying. It also treats patients so they know they are still important to others, gives honest compassionate answers to questions, and encourages patients and family members to give expression to their feelings
- Spiritual needs: hospice recognizes the importance of spiritual matters. Patients and family members can share their feelings and fears and gain support from the Hospice chaplain
Hospice Inpatient Admission Criteria
- Uncontrolled pain - sudden onset of new manifestation, ongoing pain management, dosage adjustment
- Chronic nausea, or other gastrointestinal symptoms which is difficult to control
- Respiratory distress
- Severe decubiti or other skin lesions
- Other physical symptoms defined by the Hospice Team as unmanageable in an alternative setting
- Psychological problems and uncontrolled symptoms that can create significant psychological pathology in the patient or family
- Behavioral or cognitive abnormalities that do not appear neurological
- Acute family breakdown or family disruption which prevents family members from functioning as caregivers
About Hospice
- The patient and family is the unit of care in hospice
- Physicians may admit and follow their patients as they would for any acute-care admission
- Patients may be admitted from any hospital, nursing home or residential setting
- Hospice of New York does not discriminate on the basis of age, religion, national origin, disease, handicap, race, gender or sexual orientation
- Every patient who is admitted to Hospice must have an attending physician who is primarily responsible for the medical care of the patient
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