Hospice and Home Health Care

People often confuse home health care with hospice care. For example, a nurse who makes regular home visits is often called a hospice nurse. Although they are closely linked, home health care and hospice care are two different types of care.

What Is Home Health Care?

Home health care covers a range of care coverage. It can be a hospice-style care, with a terminally ill person wanting to die at home, but it can also be for someone who needs regular health care but who is unable to get to a medical facility on a daily or weekly basis. Those who need home health care could have permanent disabilities or a prolonged illness.

The care is provided by home care agencies. If the home care agency is certified by Medicare, home health care is covered by the insurance. It is a lot less expensive to allow a senior citizen to live at home, if at all possible, while still receiving high quality care.

The health care is usually provided by a nurse who has had training working with senior citizens and elderly health care issues. The frequency of the visits is dependent on the type of care that is needed. Some nurses will visit a patient daily to administer insulin shots, monitor blood pressure, change dressings on a surgical wound, and perform similar duties. For other patients, the need to visit is usually less frequent.

What Is Hospice Care?

Hospice care is given to those who are terminally ill, usually with a specified amount of time to live, who wish to die either at home or in a special care facility. Hospice care goes beyond caring for the physical needs of the person, but provides emotional, spiritual, and social support, as well. Hospice care can be, and often is, an extension of home health care, but home health care is not always a hospice situation. The goal of hospice care is to provide the best quality of life possible for a terminally ill person in those last days. There will be times that a hospice provider will do nothing more than sit with the ill person and hold a hand.

Hospice caregivers are familiar with the support systems available and reach out to families in ways that regular home health caregivers do not.