Options for patients released from Hospice care?

Hire home care or skilled nursing facility. My mom can't walk or get out of bed either unless we transfer her. She is dependent with all transfers but can sit in a wheelchair. She doesn't qualify for hospice so she is at home with me and three other women who all take turns caring for her. It runs about $1100 per month to pay the three girls to help me.

Being released from hospice only means that she is doing better than expected from the "six months to live" criteria doctors usually have for dying patients, and/or she is not expected to live very much longer. All the pain meds won't change a terminal diagnosis and all of you children need to expect the certainty of her death. I am sorry for your loss.

My 90 year old father is on hospice now. How old is your Mother? My Father can not walk or get out of bed either. Think that I might be in the same boat as you.

I'm sorry that your experiencing such a confusing situation. In order to stay on hospice, your mother must be considered terminal.

Hospice is there for comfort care, not rehabilitation. They do give heavy doses of pain medication as part of keeping the person comfortable. Considering that the person is supposedly dying, addiction isn't the issue - comfort is.

That being said, many people do improve once they are in hospice. Sometimes it's because they have been taken off of a long list of medications that had horrible side effects. Other times, it's simply the course of their disease and no one knows why they improve. However, once they are no longer considered terminal, insurance will no longer pay, so hospice has no choice but to release them from the program.

Since your mother has two months left in hospice, I'd start looking at nursing home or other care just in case she makes it. However, she may be in a temporary upswing with her condition and that may pass. No one can really tell - even the doctors. Just start preparing for her care outside of hospice knowing that it's entirely possible that she won't keep improving.

Most people who leave hospice are back on again shortly - after all, they were accepted into the program because they were diagnosed as terminal.

Please keep us updated. This is horrible to go through alone.
Carol

I meant to say..........She can be care for at home or in a skilled nursing care facility............sorry

What does the family think is best? Care for her at brothers house? He burnt out? Place her in skilled nursing care?

It's not unusual for elders to get better under hospice care and be taken off hospice. She may well qualify for hospice again in the future. Hospice organizations are used to this. But they can't continue to provide care if death is not imminent.

Assuming there's funds for her care she can go to a nursing home or skilled nursing facility. My guess is that if she was admitted to hospice she should be in a skilled nursing care facility.