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Over 40% of all dying patients in the United States currently undergo hospice care. [20] Most of the hospice care occurs at a home environment during the last weeks/months of their lives. Of those patients, 86.6% believe their care is "excellent". [20] Hospice's philosophy is that death is a part of life, so it is personal and unique.
In the United States, hospice care is a type and philosophy of end-of-life care which focuses on the palliation of a terminally ill patient's symptoms. These symptoms can be physical, emotional, spiritual, or social in nature. The concept of hospice as a place to treat the incurably ill has been evolving since the 11th century.
End-of-life care (EOLC) is health care provided in the time leading up to a person's death.End-of-life care can be provided in the hours, days, or months before a person dies and encompasses care and support for a person's mental and emotional needs, physical comfort, spiritual needs, and practical tasks.
Under Medicare guidelines, hospice patients require a terminal diagnosis or markers of a life-threatening condition — such as severe weight loss or loss of mobility — indicating the person will likely die within six months or sooner. Maples did not have a terminal illness. Her diagnosis was “debility, unspecified,” according to her records.
Terminal illness or end-stage disease is a disease that cannot be cured or adequately treated and is expected to result in the death of the patient. This term is more commonly used for progressive diseases such as cancer , dementia , advanced heart disease , HIV/AIDS , or long COVID in bad cases than for injury .
Dying is the final stage of life which will eventually lead to death. Diagnosing dying is a complex process of clinical decision-making, and most practice checklists facilitating this diagnosis are based on cancer diagnoses.
Until recently, hospice was a nonprofit service mostly catering to cancer patients. Hospice care usually happens at home, where a nurse or caretaker visits a dying patient and comforts him or her. Occasionally it happens in an institutional setting, such as a nursing home. A few hospices also have inpatient facilities.
The Liverpool Care Pathway for the Dying Patient (LCP) was a care pathway in the United Kingdom (excluding Wales) covering palliative care options for patients in the final days or hours of life. It was developed to help doctors and nurses provide quality end-of-life care, to transfer quality end-of-life care from the hospice to hospital setting.