The inability of family and medical teams to care for the patient; mental signs such as decreased alertness, abstinence, increased sleep, or mental disorders. If your parents or an aging loved one are terminally ill and your goals include comfort, spending time with loved ones and improving quality of life, palliative care may be the solution. Palliative care focuses on relieving pain and controlling symptoms, rather than curing the disease. To access palliative care, a doctor must diagnose your loved one who is suffering from a terminal illness with a prognosis of six months or less to live if the illness continues its usual course.
If your loved one lives beyond this six-month period, they can continue to receive palliative care if a doctor re-certifies their eligibility. If your loved one's condition improves while receiving palliative care or if you choose to pursue curative treatments instead of palliative care, you can stop palliative care at any time and seek other options. Your loved one can resume palliative care later if their condition worsens. Excelsior Springs Hospice, a patient-centered hospice that obtained 100% of the patient-centered measures from CMS, provides palliative care services in Missouri and specifically for patients in Clay, Ray, Clinton counties and Caldwell.
With a commitment to providing quality care to nearby communities, our cost-effective, high-quality services help our referral partners lower their costs and improve quality metrics in various CMS programs. Hospitals and doctors can compare hospices using quality measures based on the set of hospice items (HIS) to make referrals. The quality of care score of Medicare patients who obtain hospices is a direct indicator of the quality of care that patients receive in the palliative care center and what caregivers should consider when choosing a palliative care agency. The analysis conducted by Dexur (a health data and research service) of CMS quality measures shows that ESH Hospice was the only one, out of a total of 28 hospices in the larger area of Excelsior Springs, Missouri, that scored 100% on the six measures of the HIS care process reported. Hospitals must ensure that patients who leave their facilities are discharged from appropriate hospice.
Patients likely to have a higher chance of mortality should be discharged to a palliative care facility. Patients at high risk of mortality when discharged from hospice have experienced improved pain management and quality of life. Timely discharge from hospice can help extend the life expectancy of these patients and prevent readmissions and premature mortality. Therefore, patients likely to have a high chance of mortality should be discharged from hospice.
The hospital mortality rate corresponding to the index stay at a Liberty, Missouri, hospital is 47.91 percent of total 30-day deaths, with 310 deaths. The 30-day hospital mortality rate due to discharge from hospice was 56.97 percent (801 deaths) of the total 30-day mortality at the hospital in northern Kansas City, Missouri, and the non-index 30-day mortality of patients without a palliative care discharge was 13.58 percent (191 deaths) of the total 30-day mortality. Patients who were not discharged to a palliative care facility and died within 30 days of admission may have been considered for receive the appropriate discharge. Hospitals should always give appropriate hospice discharge to patients with a high probability of mortality.
Adequate discharges from hospices increase patients' chances of survival and reduce the risk of hospital readmission and mortality. Dexur did an analysis of one of the main referral partners of ESH Hospice, from Clay County. An analysis of hospital discharges based on ICD codes shows that people with a higher probability of mortality are not always discharged from the hospital suitable. For example, the ICD Z515 — Encounter for palliative care has a hospice discharge rate of 46.71% (291 discharges out of 623 hospitalizations with that ICD code).
However, 332 hospitalizations (53.29% of patients hospitalized) with the ICD Z515 — Encounter for palliative care are not discharged to hospice. Patients likely to have a higher chance of mortality should be properly discharged and transferred to a palliative care facility. Patients who have previously been admitted to palliative care need hospice services to prevent their condition from worsening further. Providing adequate palliative care can help patients manage pain, improve quality of life, and therefore help hospitals avoid early mortality and new readmissions, which can negatively affect hospital-quality outcomes.
Dexur's analysis of Medicare claims data from one of ESH Hospice's major referral partners shows inpatients who were not discharged from hospice despite having previously been hospitalized in hospice. The possibility of discharging these patients from a hospice could have been considered. ESH hospice has been one of the most attractive referral options for doctors and hospitals in the region. Our center provides cutting-edge quality care to patients seeking affordable, quality hospice services.
HealtheLife Care Portal Learn more about CarePayment Request a quote. If your patient is terminally ill and you estimate a life expectancy of about six months or less, specialized palliative care from Arbor Hospice can provide you with a better quality of life and often keep patients at home. The hospice team meets with the prospective patient to assess their condition and determine if they are eligible for palliative care. Nurses have the opportunity to evaluate their patients and promote referral to hospice through planned and thoughtful interdisciplinary collaboration and, most importantly, by communicating with the patient and their family. Once the patient begins the hospice service, the palliative care team will ensure that the patient has the medications, supplies, and equipment needed to treat symptoms of the terminal illness.
When a hospice consultation is requested, the provider issuing the referral order must accept that the patient's prognosis is less than 6 months and that aggressive therapy is no longer beneficial. Hospice may be appropriate not only for cancer patients, but also for others who are in the terminal stage of a chronic debilitating illness. The Arbor Hospice team works with you, as well as with the patient and their family, to develop a care plan and support network that meets the patient's needs and desires, surrounded by their loved ones.
