Hospice Care Case Study

To “live as fully and comfortably as possible” is a key phrase in the care and treatment of a patient under hospice care. Hospice care focuses on the comfort and quality of life for a person with a terminal illness. The focus is not on a cure. A hospice care provider wants to help the patient be as pain free and comfortable as they can be, so that they can live the rest of their life as fully as possible. Unfortunately, more often than not, patients with terminal illnesses are viewed to be too frail to participate in occupations (Russell, M., & Bauh-Lampe, A., 20016). It is also true that people facing the end of their life feel helpless or depressed, lose their ability to participate in a lot of the daily activities they once enjoyed, and experience a loss of dignity. (Badger, S., Macleod, R., & Honey, A. 2016). However, with hospice care, many patients are able to find some degree of comfort, safety and control over their lives during their final days.

Hospice care can be provided in a variety of settings – in a hospital, in a facility devoted to

In 2015, females made up over half of the hospice Medicare beneficiaries at 58.7%. It was also shown that in this same year, almost 65% of hospice Medicare patients were over the age of 80. A staggering 86.8% of the Medicare patients were Caucasian, and cancer was the principal diagnosis at 27.7%.

For the purposes of this paper, I focused on a freestanding facility that has a portion of its services devoted to hospice care – Signature Hospice, Home Health, Home Care. Signature Hospice is headquartered in Wilsonville, OR, but has locations in not only Oregon, but Washington, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. (Signature Hospice, Home Health, Home Care, 2017). For this research paper, I interviewed Megan Resetar, Administrator, and Amber Sekreta, Volunteer Coordinator, from the home office in