Your Patients Trust You. Trust Hospice to Help.

Hospice provides expert symptom management and reduces unnecessary hospitalizations—helping patients stay home, where they want to be.
Download: 5 Signs It's Time for Hospice

As a primary care physician, you are central to care decisions for your most seriously ill patients—even as they approach end of life. When high-cost, high-need patients repeatedly present to the emergency department with advanced illness, hospice can help you manage their care more effectively:

  • Provide expert symptom management and emotional support
  • Reduce unnecessary hospitalizations and readmissions
  • Support seamless transitions that align with patient and family goals

Trust VITAS Healthcare to ensure your patients receive coordinated, comfort-focused care that improves outcomes and reduces strain on ED resources—while supporting your team in managing patients with advanced illnesses.

Case Study:
Patient with Advanced Heart Failure

The Challenge
An 84-year-old nursing home resident with advanced heart failure (HF) was hospitalized three times over three months. One week after her last hospitalization, she returned to the emergency department with worsening CHF symptoms, lethargy and weight loss.
Goal
To stop repeated hospitalizations and improve patient’s quality of life.
Solution

In consultation with the ED physician, the patient and family agreed to a discharge plan for hospice care in the patient’s nursing home.

The interdisciplinary hospice care team created an individualized care plan and supported facility staff in managing the patient’s cardiac symptoms. Over the next five weeks, the patient received routine visits from a hospice aide for personal care, and a hospice nurse and respiratory therapist for symptom management. Symptom exacerbation required one instance of continuous care (24-hour Intensive Comfort Care®) at the patient’s bedside. A social worker and chaplain provided support to the patient’s family with funeral arrangements and anticipatory grief.

Result
The patient remained in the nursing home, avoided further ED visits and passed away peacefully six weeks later with family present.
 

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