Compassionate Hospice Care
Hospice manages symptoms to maintain or enhance quality of life. Hospice services are available for anyone with a life-limiting illness who wants comfort care rather than curative procedures. Hospice care may span months or more and can be at offered in nursing homes, long-term care facilities or hospitals. Hospice is simply a type of care that focuses on the quality of life someone has left.
For decades, UPMC Susquehanna's Hospice care has worked to improve the quality of life for our patients while helping them and their families live life to the fullest.
Browse through our hospice services below:
- Grief support
- Heartworks grief support group
- Young adult grief support group
- Adult grief support group
How does hospice care work? Typically, a family member serves as the primary caregiver and, when appropriate, helps make decisions for the terminally ill individual. Members of the hospice staff make regular visits to assess the patient and provide additional care or other services. Hospice staff is on-call 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The hospice team develops a care plan that meets each patient's individual needs for pain management and symptom control. The team usually consists of:
- Patient's personal physician
- Hospice physician or medical director
- Nurses
- Home health aides
- Social workers
- Clergy or other counselors
- Trained volunteers
- Speech, physical, and occupational therapists if needed
What services are provided?
Among its major responsibilities, the interdisciplinary hospice team:
- Manage patient’s pain and symptoms
- Assists the patient with the emotional and psychosocial and spiritual aspects of dying
- Provides needed drugs, medical supplies, and equipment
- Coaches the family on how to care for the patient
- Delivers special services like speech and physical therapy when needed
- Makes short-term inpatient care available when pain or symptoms become too difficult to manage at home, or the caregiver needs respite time
- Provides bereavement care and counseling to surviving family and friends
Paying for Hospice Care
Most insurance, including Medicare and Medicaid, covers hospice. Hospice care is based on the patient’s needs, not ability to pay. Individuals with limited resources or who are uninsured can receive assistance, thanks to generous donations from the community.
Hospice also pays for additional items that are related to the patient's terminal illness such as medications, equipment and other personal comfort items.
Additional Amenities
- Volunteer program
- Music therapy
- Blankets of Love
- Heartworks – Children and teen grief support program
Additional Resources
To learn more about Hospice care, call (570) 320-7691. Donations are welcome and accepted through our Foundation Office.
If you or a loved one is making a new transition in life, UPMC Susquehanna provides home care and hospice in Williamsport and Wellsboro, PA, and surrounding areas.