Providing You and Your Loved One Care And Support

Hospice provides patients, as well as their loved ones, with comfort and support when an illness no longer responds to treatments designed to cure the patient. The primary focus is pain management and symptom control.

The focus shifts from the intent to cure comfort care and increasing quality of life.

Although Medicare requires that hospice patients must have a terminal illness with a prognosis of 6 months or less to live, there is no set amount of time that one can utilize the hospice benefit.

Hospice can serve a greater purpose. It allows the family and health care professionals to carry out your wishes. That is a way for you to decide and control how to live out your days with dignity.

Why Choose Luna Vista Hospice?

Luna Vista Hospice provides exceptional end-of-life care addressing the body, mind, and spirit of our patients, as well as quality support for your family. We can provide care in your house, a skilled nursing center, an assisted living facility or a medical foster home. Our clinicians help create individualized care plans to fit each patient’s individual wants and needs with pain and symptom management as our primary focus.

Caring for a sick loved one is one of the most significant challenges life can present. We’re here for you, as well. Whether it is to provide you with a safe place to share your feelings or to assist you with making end-of-life arrangements for your loved one.

Hospice Team

Our hospice team is here to assure that you have a collaborative plan of care that relates to you and your family’s values and wishes. Depending on your terminal illness and related conditions, the plan of care your hospice team creates can include any or all of these services:

Hospice Physician

The hospice medical director works in collaboration with the clinical team to develop a comprehensive medical care plan for each patient. The hospice physician is an expert on end of life medical care and comfort care.

Nursing Care

On-call available 24 hours a day. Nurses play a first-hand role in ensuring their patients are comfortable and addressing their pain and symptoms.

Hospice Aide Care

Hospice aids provide personal hygiene care, including bathing, dressing, hair care, incontinence care, and oral care for patients.

Medical Social Worker

The role of a hospice medical social worker is to advocate for each patient’s end-of-life wishes and help individuals address the emotional aspects of late-stage illnesses. Hospice social workers also assist families in identifying other available local services and resources for additional support.

Spiritual Care / Bereavement Services

The hospice chaplain plans assesses and cares for a patient and family’s spiritual needs throughout the end-of-life process.

Often as a terminally-ill patient approaches the end of life, complex emotions such as anger, depression, and guilt can begin to emerge. Patients can also begin questioning the meaning of life, their purpose, and whether or not their life was of any value.

The hospice chaplain’s role is to help guide patients to a place of spiritual health by helping them see the value of their life and their positive impact.

Therapy Services

Therapy services, including Physical Therapy, are available to maximize functional ability and comfort to enhance a patient’s quality of life. Therapists also provide patient and caregiver education on safe transferring and DME use.

Volunteer Participant

Volunteers do not provide any medical or hands-on care. They simply spend time with the patient, talking with them and keeping them company. Volunteers also often play the patient’s favorite games with them, like cards or chess. Volunteers may also talk with patients about current events if that’s something that the patient is interested in. Some of the other things patient care volunteers do include:

• Grocery shopping
• Preparing meals for patients
• Helping with simple chores around the house
• Providing comfort and support
• Helping the patient’s caregiver with their errands and other daily tasks

Levels of Care

Routine Care

Routine home care is the basic level of hospice care provided in your home, assisted living, or nursing home. This level of care offers a team approach by hospice staff and your physician to provide comfort at the end of life. This hospice level of care includes medical social services, spiritual support, volunteer visits, bereavement counseling, medication, equipment, and all supplies related to your loved one’s hospice diagnosis.

Continuous Home Care

The level of hospice care called continuous home care is when a nurse stays in your home for an extended period of time (at least 8 hours in a 24-hour period–midnight to midnight), if your loved one is experiencing a medical crisis and severe symptoms such as unrelieved pain or shortness of breath. However, during a medical crisis like this, your hospice physician or nurse may decide the general inpatient level of care will be a better option to address your loved one’s needs.

Inpatient Hospice Care

Sometimes, severe pain or other symptoms require an advanced level of care that is more effectively provided during a short stay in an inpatient hospice facility. The goal of inpatient hospice care is to control severe pain and symptoms so that your loved one can return home to their family and familiar surroundings, if possible, and resume routine hospice care at home.

Respite Care

The respite level of hospice care is provided on an occasional basis and offers a planned, short-term break for unpaid family caregivers from the challenges of assisting a loved one with an advanced illness. It can only be provided at a Medicare-certified inpatient hospice facility, hospital, or skilled nursing facility that has the ability to provide around–the–clock nursing care should your loved one’s plan of care require 24-hour care.