Hospice Health Care Professionals

Hospice care is sensitive, dignified and cost-effective health care that has been proven to be less costly than traditional health care, with higher levels of patient and family satisfaction.

Hospice is a special, team-oriented concept of care designed to provide comfort and emotional, social, and spiritual support to patients and their families. Silverado Hospice champions the belief that each of us has the right to go through the end of life process pain-free and with dignity, and that our families should receive the necessary support to allow the process to happen. Hospice care neither prolongs life nor hastens death; the goal of hospice care is to improve the quality of a patient's life by offering comfort and dignity. Hospice also offers bereavement services to families before and after a patient's death.

Patients are eligible for Hospice care if in the physician's clinical judgment they have a life expectancy of six months or less if the disease runs its normal course.

Hospice care is a benefit of the Medicare program and is also covered by Medicaid. Most private insurance companies, HMO's and managed care plans also offer hospice care as a benefit.

End stage and terminal diseases that qualify for Hospice care include:

• Alzheimer's
• Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
• Cancer
• Dementia
• Failure to Thrive (Adult)
• Heart Disease
• HIV/AIDS
• Huntington's Disease
• Liver Disease
• Multiple sclerosis
• Muscular Dystrophy
• Myasthenia Gravis
• Non-Specific Terminal Illness
• Parkinson's Disease
• Pulmonary Disease
• Renal Failure (Acute)
• Renal Failure (Chronic)
• Stroke or Coma

Silverado Hospice collaborates with the referring physician develop professionally designed plan of care that meets the specific needs of the patients and family. Our hospice team members are experienced end-of-life care experts who provide our patients and their families with optimum quality of care.

Services include:

• RN Case Management
• Pain and symptom management
• Medical and nursing care
• Nursing instruction for caregiver and family
• Intermittent personal care for patients
• Professional grief counseling and social work services for patient and family
• Spiritual support
• Comprehensive bereavement support for one year after the patient death
• Respite care for the caregiver
• Short-term inpatient care for respite or for the management of acute symptoms
• Medical equipment and supplies (e.g. hospital beds, incontinence supplies)
• Drugs relating to the certifying diagnosis (e.g. medications for symptom control)
• 24-hour on-call access

Link to more Resources:
This is the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. You can find many helpful resources on this site.
http://www.nhpco.org
Or, go to nhpco.org, click on Professional Resources, then click on End of Life Care Resources.

More information on Silverado Senior Living's website:

Silverado's Clinical Expertise

Silverado's Clinical Blog

Silverado Safety

Silverado's Research Affiliations