At Ardent Hospice & Palliative Care, we’re dedicated to ensuring all of our patients’ needs are met at all times when they’re under our care. When a patient is on hospice, their needs can become more involved. Oftentimes, they will require constant attention and supervision. In those cases, when it’s medically appropriate, we can offer continuous care.
Continuous care is an underutilized benefit of hospice services, and families usually have several questions about it. Here are the five most common questions about continuous care, with honest, straightforward answers.
- What is continuous care?
Continuous care is a service that gives patients intensive visits; instead of being visited just once a day or week, they’re visited multiple times a day while they are in a “crisis” state. The goal of continuous care is to bring them out of that crisis mode and back into a comfortable state. It really is for the benefit of patients who are having severe, unmanageable pain or discomfort.
- Who qualifies for continuous care?
For patients to qualify for continuous care, they must already be on hospice and experiencing acute symptoms that put them into a “crisis” state. Once they’re back into a comfortable condition, the continuous care ends, but they still retain hospice care benefits.
More specific examples of patients who may qualify include:
- A patient who has fallen and is bleeding often or uncontrollably. We’ll visit them several times throughout the day to continuously change bandages until the wound is under control.
- A patient with acute respiratory distress, who is having trouble breathing while at home. While they’re in this state, we’ll check on them throughout the night.
- Someone who has constant nausea and vomiting; in those cases, we’ll visit them with IV hydration or medication to help get them back into a state of comfort.
- When a patient begins having end-stage agitation and needs consistent care to keep them calm and comfortable.
- Patients who are leaving the hospital but still need a nurse to consistently check in on them until they’re stable in their home.
- Can’t any hospice patient receive continuous care?
Not every patient on hospice care qualifies for continuous care. Again, they must be in an acute crisis state to be able to receive the around-the-clock care. Many people believe hospice is a 24/7 service, but that particular level of care is only available through continuous care. However, at Ardent, our nurses still provide exceptional care to all our patients regardless of their required level of need.
- How often do patients receive visits from nurses while on continuous care?
With continuous care, patients are visited by nurses around the clock. The patient must receive eight hours of care within a 24-hour period. We can either stay with a patient for eight hours straight, or visit every couple hours until they’re stable.
- When should a patient start continuous care?
Our families know they can call us in case of an emergency, and a lot of times, that prompts the start of continuous care. When a patient is enrolled in hospice, we become their emergency care team, so when they begin experiencing severe pain, restlessness, or difficulty breathing, we would ideally be their first call (as opposed to an ambulance). We’re able to bring the hospital to them, in a sense, with the institution of continuous care.
For more information on Ardent’s hospice services and all the ways we go above and beyond to provide care for our patients, visit us online. You can also give us a call at 559-408-5945 to speak with one of our nurses and schedule a consultation.
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