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This is with regard to my wife who is now fully quadriplegic due to MS.


I thought hospice was solely an end of life service. Now I’m told that Medicare will provide, free of charge, a hospice as opposed to palliative, that will maintain a person whose condition will not improve while they are still not with an end of life diagnosis, but with chronic hospital issues.


Apparently, hospice will come to our assistive care home and provide skilled nursing services, including a mobile physician, an RN as a team leader, an LVN to administer injections, change catheters and report any notable circumstances to the RN who confers with the MD. Also PT, a Podiatrist to cut toenails, a person to bath the patient etc. They will also supply a fully electric bed and low air loss mattress.


Is there a good reason to be wary of Medicare providing something too good to be true?

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lstuscany, so sorry you and your wife are going through this. This sounds more like palliative care. Check with your wife's case worker to be sure.
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lstuscany Sep 2019
freqflyer,
thanks for the response. I looked into the Palliative care issue but the care offered was for a shorter amount of time with less assistance offered. The 4 companies I interviewed for Palliative all said the same thing. That my wife needed the hospice. They said her condition would most likely qualify her to be recertifications for years.
As I noted. Doesn’t sound Medicare like.
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I would check directly with Medicare.gov to see if they will provide benefits for palliative care.

last time I read through the basics of hospice...to be eligibile the patient must have a prognosis of less than 6 months of life. Not to say that some live much longer...but this begins with the doc providing that diagnosis
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I've read a number of comments here on the forum from people who viewed the help they got through Hospice as a godsend and whose care recipient was looked after for years, unfortunately I've also seen the flip side of this from people who have posted that they felt the focus on end of life was much too vigorous and pushed a loved one into an unnecessarily early grave. My advice is to accept whatever help is offered, ask questions when you see anything you don't understand, and to keep in mind that you are ultimately in control and you can dismiss the service if it isn't meeting your needs/expectations.
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The hospital bed, special mattress, podiatrist were all Medicare-paid benefits that my mom got BEFORE she was on Hospice.

Certainly if a Medicare patient is bedbound, most Medicare advantage plans will provide in home services to assess her health. And some measure of in home Nursing visits.

What you are describing as Hospice service sounds to me mostly like good Home Health care through medicare, available if her doctor orders it.

What HOSPICE will provide is comfort care and an alternate response in an "emergency" situation, i.e., an alternate to calling 911 and having her transported to the hospital.
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I agree with Barb. What you are describing is not hospice care, it’s home health care. Hospice won’t be recertificied for years and years, at best your wife would be on it for 2 years tops and then “graduate” and everything will be discontinued. Hospice doesn’t really take on patients with chronic hospital issues, if you on hospice you have to discontinue it if you go to the hospital. Hospice won’t do anything to prolong life. So yes what you’ve been described is home health care not hospice. It’s worth nothing though that many hospice providers are also home health providers so they provide both types of service. My MILs hospice provider is one of those types, they provide hospice and home health care.
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