Medical Benefits of Hospice Care
While many people might believe that hospice care only aids the patient and family's emotional or spiritual needs, the industry actually provides a variety of research-backed medical benefits, as well.
Thanks to this article by Hospice Tools, we can see statistics on how hospice care helps in all areas of comfort - both physical and not.
“Patients with terminal lung cancer who started hospice immediately upon diagnosis not only were happier, more mobile and in less pain as the end neared, but they also lived nearly three months longer, ” according to findings published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“Increasing hospice services can reduce hospital admissions among all residents of a nursing home, including those not enrolled in hospice,” according to findings recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association.
“For every 10% increase in “hospice penetration” at a given facility, the risk of hospitalization decreases 5.1% for non-hospice residents and 4.8% for hospice-enrolled residents, the investigators determined.”
“For the new study, published in JAMA, the researchers used data on nearly 40,000 Medicare patients with poor-prognosis cancers who died in 2011. Half the group chose hospice, and half didn‘t. The hospice and non-hospice patients were matched by age, sex, place of residence, survival, and how many healthcare services they were using. Non-hospice patients had more hospitalizations, more stays in intensive care units, and more invasive procedures compared to patients who opted for hospice, the researchers found.”
“Those receiving hospice care, compared with matched control patients not receiving hospice care, had significantly lower rates of hospitalization, intensive care unit admission, and invasive procedures at the end of life.”
“Family members believe that nursing home hospice improves the quality of care for symptoms, reduces hospitalizations, and adds value and services for dying nursing home residents.”
