Our Way of Caring: Vantage Hospice Podcast [Episode 10] Your Hospice Questions Answered

In this episode of 'Our Way of Caring' by Vantage Hospice, we talk to Brandy to address frequently asked questions about hospice care. The episode delves into what hospice care is, how it operates, especially within Houston and Vantage Hospice, and the roles and services provided by the hospice team. Furthermore, it explores how to determine when it might be time to switch to hospice care, emphasizing the importance of individualized care, family conversations, and the holistic support hospice offers, including comfort measures and emotional readiness.

• 00:00 Welcome to Vantage Hospice Podcast
• 00:21 Understanding Hospice Care
• 01:43 Personalized Care in Houston
• 03:51 When to Consider Hospice Care
• 06:10 The Gift of Hospice
• 08:40 Ensuring Comfort and Happiness

Vantage Hospice & Palliative Care

Our Mission

Vantage Hospice, LLC is dedicated to providing individualized hospice care with services specially tailored to the physical, social, psychological and spiritual needs of patients with life limiting illness, their families and the community, by delivering high quality and compassionate care.

We strive to create a culture dedicated to meeting the needs of our patients, families and employees based on the principles of dignity, respect and compassion.

Hospice recognizes dying as part of the normal process of living and focuses on maintaining the quality of remaining life. It affirms life and neither hastens nor postpones death through a multidisciplinary team approach. Hospice is not a place. It is philosophy.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Vantage Hospice Podcast
• 0:21 Understanding Hospice Care
• 1:43 Personalized Care in Houston
• 3:51 When to Consider Hospice Care
• 6:10 The Gift of Hospice
• 8:40 Ensuring Comfort and Happiness

Transcript

0:05

Hi welcome back to our podcast with Vantage Hospice, our way of Caring. Today we're gonna actually talk with Brandy. Brandy and I are gonna have a little conversation and hopefully answer some of the frequently asked questions about hospice and give you guys some more information. So here we go. Alright, so the first question that we have is what is hospice care and how does it work, in Houston and Advantage? So, hospice care is a level of care that is provided to anyone who has a life limiting illness. The guidance from Medicare says that a patient has to have six months or less. However, patients who come on hospice oftentimes are on service longer than six months. We provide overall care to the patient wherever they call home. So it can be a private residence, a skilled nursing facility, assisted living, personal care home. Sometimes the patient is in an inpatient unit for hospice. So across wherever someone lives is where we provide care. It includes having a nurse go out and assess the patient, make sure that all of the symptoms that a patient could be experiencing at the end of life, or well palliated, or for lack of a better word, we wanna make sure that the patient is comfortable. And then we also have a team of people who support the nurse. And the patient through that entire process. That includes a social worker, chaplain, hospice aide who assists with ADLs or bathing and overall hygiene, sometimes volunteers mm-hmm. to assist the families if they need a little bit of a break and need to get out. The volunteers provide companionship, they do various tasks to enhance. The patient's life at the end of life. So in Houston, I mean, it's a unique environment because we have a really large coverage area. So at Vantage even though we have a centralized office here in the Galleria area, we have pods of teams right in each area so that we are, we have quick response times and we're able to, make sure that your needs are met really quickly. I think one thing that's important to add, we have pods of. Care teams throughout the city. A great advantage that we do have is that we also have associate medical directors. Who are typically really vested in those communities, like on the southeast of southeast side of town, we have medical director who lives in that community, works in that community north side of town, so on and so forth. So it really is we cover a large area, but each. Pocket of town has their own style. And way of doing things. These doctors know these patients in these areas and they tailor the needs of care to that, those communities specifically. One of the biggest benefits of having a centralized office and doing the POD approach is. Everything that goes on in the organization comes through our office, the central office, and Brandy and I are very much aware and involved in making sure that everything is resolved, if anything needs to be resolved and that we're dealing with any issues or problems as they arise, not, going through our corporate kind of structure to get that stuff done. The other thing, our managers are also here in the office, so there's a lot of collaboration, although each. Part of the city has different dynamics and styles and ways that they do things. There's a centralized approach and philosophy of care. So at the end of the day, our goal as an organization is to make sure that we're meeting families and patients where they are and providing hospice in a way that's going to be meaningful to them. Exactly. So we really try to individualize that plan of care for each patient and family. So the way, the expectations of a family that, for example, that live. That lives in Alvin , may differ from someone who maybe lives in the Woodlands. So individualizing the care to meet the individual needs of each patient and family and expectation. The next question we're gonna discuss is, how do I know when it's time to switch to hospice care? And That's a tough one. That's a tough one. That's a very tough one. Do you wanna start? I think the best way to say it is each patient needs to select the most appropriate level of care for them when they deem it fit. A patient can have a life limiting prognosis six months or less. However, if the patient and family are not ready. Emotionally, spiritually to accept a more palliative approach and a less aggressive approach to care. Sometimes the timing is not appropriate. So you can be clinically appropriate for hospice, but you're not emotionally ready. Agreed. Part of what our team does, and I think that we do a really great job, it is recognizing that. So we recognize this is a difficult decision. We wanna figure out what their goals are and how do we align with their goals. We provide them with education. There's no pushing from our organization, absolutely not for patients to come on service. We believe in our service and I think the care speaks for itself, but the patient and family has to be ready. I think one of the things when we're talking about determining when when you're ready for hospice or when a loved one is ready for hospice. It's having those conversations with the patient and with other members of your family. Everybody doesn't have to be necessarily on the same page in the book at the same time. But if you're having those questions and you're thinking, gee is this really what we wanna do? What's the plan? That's the time to have the conversation. Doesn't mean you have to make the decision today to do that, but you really should have that conversation and be, willing and maybe open to hearing different things. I would also say the physicians who partner with us understand that it is a difficult decision. So sometimes the referrals are made earlier than later. Just so we can begin having those conversations and help. Families decide between treatment options. So although the doctor or the treatment provider recognizes this, family's really not ready right now, but it would benefit them to have the information so when the time comes, they have had that seed plan. About what the next steps might look like for the patient. Exactly. I think it's also too important to talk about the fact that hospice is not. Giving up. Yeah, it's not giving up. Hospice changes the focus of the trajectory really, of the illness. We are focused on comfort. We kind of shift hope. We don't take away hope. I mean, we still are. We want you to experience everything that you wanna experience and be as comfortable as you possibly can while you're doing that. The focus is really on quality of life and making sure that you're meeting all of those milestones and things that you wanna do. And that's defined differently for each patient and family, right? So quality of life and comfort is individualized. Absolutely. So what I deem comfortable or quality may differ for you. Exactly. So again, having those very frank and transparent conversations with the patient and the family is important. Also, a lot of times the patient needs to be given permission to have those conversations. Sometimes we often hear, oh, well we don't wanna upset mom, mom with the H word, but sometimes we need to give permission to mom, dad, or whomever that is, to have that very frank and transparent conversations. And just a little bit of a news flash they already know. That's the other part. They're living in their body. They're living in their body, and they know when something is not right. And they may be waiting for you to open the door so that you can have those conversations and ask those questions. Yeah, so it, I mean, it really is. A gift to give somebody to talk with them, honestly and transparently about what's going on with them and not, you know, keep them in the dark. It's interesting that you say that. It is a gift because the true, one of the true gifts of hospice absent from just the palliation of symptoms, it really helps families focus on the things that really matter. Agreed. So unfortunately, when folks understand that, life may be limited shifting and saying, you know what, I don't wanna do that anymore and I don't have to. I wanna do. This. Exactly.'cause this is important to me. Exactly. Or you know what? I may not be here next year for Christmas. And we've always talked about doing Christmas in Disney World, for example. Let's do it this year. Yep. And how do we make that happen? Mm-hmm. And how And how does hospice support that Exactly. So there are many things that hospice provides in the way of a gift, and I think that's one of the biggest gifts that hospice can provide. So comfort? I mean, comfort is like you, you said individualized, so we talked about that earlier. And some of the things that hospice does, I mean, it's not just morphine and Ativan. There's a focus on, trying, like for congestive heart failure, for example, if you're having a lot of edema. We do work on, maybe elevating your legs to make sure that you're able to walk if they're really swollen. We do a lot of things. Yeah. Honestly, so when we talk about comfort, a lot of things that people do towards the end of life is going to a lot of appointments, sitting in waiting rooms, doing things that are uncomfortable to a patient who might have some type of chronic pain issue. So. God forbid you're sitting in your doctor's office for 30 to 45 minutes waiting to be seen. You're in the room for another, 30 minutes and then you're waiting to be checked out for another 20 minutes. That's not necessarily comfortable. We provide all the care in home, in the home. So we come to you, we bring your medications to you, our field team comes to you in your home environment. If you needed an x-ray of some type, we do that. In your place of residence. So comfort is not having to go out and do these uncomfortable things and being in your own home environment. Of course, we provide medications. If a patient needs supplemental oxygen, we do that if you're having periods of shortness of breath. So there are multitude of things that we do to ensure that the patient is comfortable, but again, that is all very individualized. I think another thing that we also do, maybe not comfort wise, but it, I mean. We try to make people happy. So if you are a diabetic and you've been on a diabetic diet for the last 20 years and all you want is a piece of chocolate cake, go ahead and make the chocolate cake. Yeah. If you don't want to take your diuretic anymore. You don't have to. So the focus is really on the patient. It's patient centered, and you call the shots. So you let us know what you wanna do. Of course. We're gonna give our opinions and let you know, kind of, of the risk. Risk versus benefit. Yeah. But ultimately the decision is yours. And we wanna support whatever decisions you have.