Home health care provides medical treatment and support services when you are recovering from an illness, injury, or hospital stay; if you are disabled, chronically ill, or terminally ill; when you need medical, nursing, social, or therapeutic treatment; and/or if you need assistance with daily living activities. Home health services are intended to help you recover, regain independence and become as self-sufficient as possible. Ascend Home Health offers skilled nursing, home health aides, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy to support your recovery at home.

In order to receive home health care, you must meet the following requirements:

You must have a doctor’s order for home health.

You must be in need of either skilled nursing care or therapy services (i.e., physical/occupational/speech therapy) on an intermittent basis.

You must be restricted, due to your condition, in your ability to leave home (“homebound”), and a physician must certify your “homebound status”.

Palliative care is a medical specialty for those coping with serious illness. The care focuses on managing the pain, symptoms and effects of illness, often alongside curative treatment, to achieve the highest quality of care. Palliative care is for people who physically or emotionally are not ready for hospice.

Both palliative care and hospice care provide comfort to improve quality of life. Unlike hospice, palliative care is available while a patient is still seeking treatment. Hospice becomes an option when the focus turns from seeking a cure to seeking quality for the time that remains, usually six months or less, though patients can be certified for additional 60-day periods of care. 

Hospice is a philosophy of care. It treats the person rather than the disease and focuses on quality of life. Hospice care surrounds the patient and family with a team that not only addresses physical distress but emotional and spiritual issues as well. Our philosophy of hospice care is to alleviate physical discomfort while providing emotional, spiritual, and bereavement support to the terminally ill patient and their family.

Hospice care offers patients the opportunity to live life more fully with control, comfort, and dignity. Whether it’s for one month or six, Ascend Hospice’s team of professionals will provide you or your loved one with exceptional medical care as well as strong emotional and spiritual support. Hospice care provides comfort and support for patients with all types of illnesses including cancer; heart, lung, vascular, kidney, and neuromuscular diseases; all types of dementia; and AIDS. 

Hospice services can be provided to a person wherever he or she resides – at home, a personal care home, an assisted living facility, a nursing facility, or an acute hospital.

In many cases, a family member serves as the primary caregiver and helps make decisions with or on behalf of a loved one. For those who may be unable to participate in making their own decisions about care, the Ascend Hospice team works directly with the primary responsible party to develop a patient-centered plan of care to provide treatment, support, personal care, and a number of specialized services for both the patient and family. At Ascend, our hospice care team is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to provide assistance in managing your individual needs. 

Not at all! Although your loved one’s condition may have reached a point that a cure is not likely – or that the benefits of stopping treatment outweigh the side effects – that does not mean there is nothing left to do. In fact, an emphasis on quality of life and easing pain and distress often allows the patient to spend his or her last months focusing on the things that are ultimately the most important and meaningful. With the expert guidance of a nurse case manager and assistance from hospice aides, social workers and chaplains, both patients and families find they can focus on their relationships, healing old wounds, and spending precious time together. Far from giving up, hospice helps families find hope in quality of life while supporting each other during an often stressful and emotional, but in the end, very natural family life transition.

A person may sign out of the hospice program for a variety of reasons, such as resuming aggressive curative treatment or pursuing experimental measures. If a patient begins to recover and no longer has a life expectancy of six months or less, he or she can be discharged from hospice care and return to the program at a later time, if and when the illness has progressed.

Hospice care believes that treating emotional and spiritual pain is just as important as treating physical pain. Hospice nurses and doctors utilize the most current medications for the treatment of physical pain. For emotional pain, physical and occupational therapists can help patients remain as mobile and self-sufficient as they wish, and they are sometimes joined by specialists/volunteers schooled in music therapy, art therapy, massage, and diet counseling. Finally, various counselors, including clergy, are available to assist family members and patients in the treatment of spiritual pain.

The patient’s attending physician is part of the Ascend Hospice team and remains responsible for and coordinates the care of the patient in conjunction with the rest of the Ascend Hospice team.

The frequency of visits is based on the patient’s and family’s individualized needs as described in the patient-centered plan of care and may change or evolve over time as the patient’s and family’s needs change.

Our volunteers can provide a wide range of services to our hospice patients such as companionship, bereavement support, and a range of specialized holistic services including aromatherapy and Reiki.  Volunteers also provide specially crafted items to support patients and families like memory bears, hand castings, and hand-made blankets. Upon request, Ascend Hospice can place a volunteer within five days. 

All volunteers receive extensive training on basic hospice care prior to providing services to any patient as well as mentoring and yearly mandatory education.  Ascend Hospice also has an in-depth End of Life Doula program which provides further education to those serving our patients and families.  Our holistic therapy services include volunteers who are specially trained in aromatherapy, Reiki, massage, and more.

At Ascend Hospice, we believe in a personalized hospice approach, offering specialized programs for veterans and patients with end-stage cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and dementia.