Living with serious illness can feel overwhelming, stressful, frightening and unsettling. Often you don’t know where to turn to get real support. And there may come a time when caring for a seriously ill loved one becomes more than you can handle without help. Getting the right care is important in controlling symptoms, pain and ensuring and sustaining quality of life. Getting the right care controls symptoms, manages pain, and helps ensure an optimal quality of life. Getting the right care is the first step to helping your loved one avoid being rushed to the hospital.

Many studies have shown that hospice is proven to reduce hospitalizations. According to a report published in Jama Internal Medicine, palliative care options, like hospice, can significantly reduce the rate of hospitalizations and aggressive procedures for patients with serious illness.

The success of hospice care is enrolling at the right time to maximize the quality of end-of-life care and ensure the full benefits of care. The extra layer of support and expert care provided through hospice can lead to less hospitalizations, ICU admissions, invasive procedures, and lower expenditures in the last year of life.

In a matched cohort study of over 18,000 pairs of Medicare patients with poor-prognosis cancers, researchers reported that non-hospice patients had significantly more hospitalizations, (65% vs 42%), intensive care (ICU; 36% vs 15%), and invasive procedures (51% vs 27%) than hospice patients.

Hospice providers, like UpliftedCare, have a strong track record when it comes to reducing avoidable hospitalizations. Expert care coupled with the following protocols and support can help keep your loved one out of the hospital.

Symptom Management. Seriously ill patients are often hospitalized for health issues that could have been prevented through better end-of-life care. Hospice provides expert care focused on symptom management. Hospice helps manage distressing symptoms including: anxiety, depression, difficulty sleeping, fatigue, nausea, pain, shortness of breath and other disease-specific conditions.

Expert Care. Hospice is expert care. UpliftedCare is uniquely trained in managing the complications of serious illness. Our team of medical experts including physicians, registered nurses, and therapists focus on controlling symptoms and increasing comfort to prevent medical crises. Hospice providers are highly trained experts in pain management and symptom control. What this means is that issues that would typically send patients back to the hospital can be resolved through the scope of the expert care that hospice provides.

Individual Plans of Care. UplifedCare’s team creates individual plans of care unique to each patient and their serious illness. Patients receive ongoing evaluation and plans of care change as the disease progresses and symptoms change, helping ensure early identification and assessment of changes in patients’ health status. Hospice also provides a continuous level of care if a crisis develops.

TapCloud. We check in with your loved one frequently by phone to get a clear, picture of how they are doing. TapCloud is an innovative app that helps our patients watch for and track symptoms so we can provide the best possible support tailored to their needs. Through TapCloud our patients have a way to communicate with our care team in real-time. TapCould helps us stay in touch with your loved one between appointments allowing patients to communicate updates or specific needs they may have. This extra step works alongside in-person visits with an UpliftedCare nurse.

Education. Hospice also provides condition-specific education and support. Caregiver support, education and resources help caregivers feel less overwhelmed, know what to expect and feel more confident in their caregiving role.

24/7/365 Support. Access to care is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. When a situation occurs patients and family caregivers are asked to ‘call UpliftedCare first’. This level of access to care around-the-clock reduces those 3 am runs to the emergency room.

UpliftedCare brings an extra layer of support to individuals living with serious illness and to their families. We focus on easing pain, controlling symptoms and reducing the burdens of illness. Together we can help you regain control and feel empowered because each day is about your choice to live more fully.

If you are a family caregiver and have questions about living with a serious illness and how to improve peace of mind and quality of life, we can help. For answers, resources and support, call our UpliftedCare team at 815.939.4141.