Considering Hospice Benefits

Kathie Campbell, a marketing director for Hospice of the Panhandle in West Virginia, writes about some of the benefits of hospice care, and urges her community to take advantage of their services.

Think for a minute. Think about your family, friends, neighbors, co-workers. Think about the people with whom you go to church and the people you see in the grocery store. Think about those with whom you share a hobby or attend club meetings. Think about the people you meet at your children's school. Of all those people - the people you relate to day in and day out - it is probable that at least one of them would benefit from hospice but is not receiving the service.

In 2008, just 32 percent of all the people who died from end-stage illness in the Eastern Panhandle died under the care of hospice (45 percent of that one third had just one month of care or less). Close to 1,000 people died in Berkeley, Hampshire, Jefferson and Morgan counties in 2008 without any support from hospice.

Think about this for another minute. Those nearly 1,000 people - people we know - suffered with the challenges of advanced disease alone, without the team of professionals and volunteers that cares for the patient while also supporting the family and caregivers. They never had access to the 24-hour, on-call support that would have prevented unnecessary trips to the emergency room or admissions to the hospital. They did not have the expert pain and symptom management from the hospice nurses and physicians. And they never reaped the financial benefit of hospice, a program that includes professional staff visits to the home, medicines, treatments, equipment, supplies, respite care, crisis care, hospitalization and bereavement care for the survivors - all fully covered by Medicare, Medicaid and most private insurers. All these people missed out on one of the best health care programs available today.