Hospice and Palliative Care Eligibility Guidelines

One question HealthNow is often asked what is the difference between Hospice and Palliative Care? People often interchange both Hospice Care and Palliative care as the same. However, there are is a significant difference between Palliative and Hospice Care and both are two programs that are readily available for patients that are diagnosed with a terminal illness. Although these two can be similar, they are really different in focus. On one hand, palliative care aims to ease pain and help with other problems if your illness is serious but not considered to be life-threatening for now. I cases where an illness is expected to be fatal, Palliative Care can help you live as active a life as possible during care. Palliative Care can transition to hospice care once the doctor determines that the patient’s condition can no longer be improved and that there is only little time left.

On the other hand, Hospice Care is for people who have learned from doctors that they are not expected to recover from their condition generally are expected to have less than 6 months to live. It’s about easing pain and helping families prepare for the end of life. Palliative care is part of that, but it’s just one part. The goal of hospice care is to help people who are dying have peace, comfort and dignity.

The question now is, when a patient does becomes eligible for palliative care and when do they qualify for hospice care. This is the first thing to consider when deciding for an end-of-life care treatment. Some of the common illness and symptoms that qualifies a person for palliative care is as follows:

• Cancer
• Heart Disease or Congestive Heart Failure
• Respiratory Disease or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
• Renal Disease or Failure
• Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) 
• Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)
• Chronic Liver Disease
• Multiple Sclerosis (MS)
• Alzheimer’s Disease
• Cerebrovascular accident (CVA)/ Stroke
• Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)

Others may just experience symptoms such as shortness of breath, nausea or vomiting, constipation, loss of appetite, fatigue, depression, delirium, difficulty sleeping or insomnia, anxiety and other chronic condition that causes periodic symptoms. It is safe to say that as long as an illness causes a long-term pain and discomfort a person can seek for palliative care given that the physician advised to do so.

While palliative care consider a lot of things, determining a person who is eligible for hospice care is quite easy. For starters, as long as the patient is deemed to live 6 months or less and they accept that their disease cannot be cured anymore, it can be eligible for hospice care. Some of the other illnesses that can be eligible are as follows:

• AIDS
• Cancer
• Cerebral Vascular Accident (CVA) / Stroke
• Congestive Heart Failure / Cardiopulmonary Disease
• Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease / Cardiopulmonary Disease
• Dementia
• Liver Disease
• Neurological Conditions (non-Alzheimer’s dementia, Parkinson’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, ALS, and Huntington’s disease)
• Renal Disease

It can be observe that same illnesses can be eligible for both palliative and hospice care, the only difference lies on what is the goal of the person. If a person still wants to get better and is not diagnosed to live for less than six months, then they can opt to get palliative care, otherwise they can get hospice care. HealthNow Hospice covers both Hospice Care Services and Palliative Care Services in the Bay Area.