Palliative Care
What is Palliative Care?
"Palliative" is just a fancy medical word that means comfort and relief.
- Palliative medicine is a specialized field focused on relieving pain and other uncomfortable symptoms of advancing, severe life-limiting disease.
- Palliative Care is appropriate at any stage of illness and can be provided at the same time as curative treatment. Patients do not need to be receiving hospice care to receive palliative care.
- Specialized physicians and nurse practitioners provide consultations and care. The patient may require a single palliative consultation or multiple professional palliative visits for complex care solutions.
- The patient's primary physician continues to direct the patient's care.
Benefits of Palliative Care
Palliative care prevents and relieves suffering and supports the best possible quality of life for patients living with serious illness and their families. Benefits include:
- Enhanced quality of care – "filling the gaps"
- Enhanced symptom management
- Extended visit time with palliative professional to help patients and families establish care goals
- Decreased re-hospitalizations
- Home visits for patients who can no longer travel to offices or clinics
- Simplified management of complex care
- Coordination of palliative support with all other appropriate medical treatments
Your physician may request a Palliative Consultation to determine if you could benefit from palliative services.
Palliative Consultation is a benefit usually covered by Medicare, Medicaid, and most private insurance.
"I can speak for other members of my family when I say thank you for all you have done."
--Patient family member