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Hospice Eligibility

When is it time to ask for Agrace Hospice Care? Please call our Enrollment Team at (800) 930-2770 with your questions. For reference, here are Medicare's eligibility guidelines for several common life-limiting conditions.

 

Physician/Clinician Education

Educational resources for physicians and long-term care professionals about palliative care and end-of-life care.

  • Extra Palliative Support for Long-term Care Residents with Dementia
    Agrace offers palliative care consultations in southern Wisconsin for adults with dementia.
  • Giving Hospice Comfort Medications
    A teaching guide for long-term care/assisted living staff caring for Agrace Hospice Care patients.
  • What is my Resident with Dementia Telling Me?
    Interventions for 12 common behaviors related to dementia.
  • Clinical Practice Guideline: Dementia
    A detailed reference for hospice care and long-term care professionals caring for people who have dementia.
  • Clinical Practice Guideline: Liver Disease
    A detailed reference for hospice and long-term care professionals caring for people who have end-stage liver disease.
  • Clinical Practice Guideline: Active Dying
    A detailed reference for health care professionals caring for people in the final days or hours of life
  • The Differences between Nonprofit and For-profit Hospices
    In 2019, the National Partnership for Healthcare and Hospice Innovation partnered with Milliman, a global actuarial and consulting firm, to conduct a study with the objective of understanding the differences and similarities in financial performance and quality of care between nonprofit and for-profit hospices serving Medicare beneficiaries. Here are the high-level takeaways: 1) Nonprofit hospices have an aggregate net margin of 3.0% vs. 19.9% for for-profit hospices. 2) Nonprofit hospices provide patients with 10% more nursing visits, 35% more social worker visits, and twice as many therapy visits vs for-profit hospices per patient day. 3) Inpatient stays—nonprofit hospices enroll a higher percentage of patients who have inpatient hospital stays immediately prior to hospice admission. Suggests they may be high-acuity patients with greater care needs upon hospice enrollment. 4) For-profit hospices report spending over 300% more on advertising costs than nonprofit hospices. 5) For-profit hospices report spending less than half what nonprofit hospices report on bereavement services.
 

Clinical In-services

These educational presentations about common end-of-life care issues are designed for staff of our long-term care partner facilities, other health care professionals and community organizations. Contact us at (608) 276-4660 or grp-outreach@agrace.org to schedule.

What to Expect When Death Is Approaching
Dementia at the End of Life: Caring for Hospice Patients
Pain Management for the Hospice Patient
Advance Care Planning
Incorporating Cultural Humility in End-of-Life Care
Grief 101 for Health Care Professionals: Grief Basics and Words that Comfort
Grief in the Health Care Workplace
Agrace 101: Caring Every Step of the Way*
Team Building for Frontline Staff*
 

Forms

Here are links to Wisconsin advance care planning forms.

 

Videos for Health Care Professionals

Hospice Eligibility Series

Hospice Eligibility: Alzheimer’s and Dementia
General Decline Educational Town Hall Discussion

ABC's of Dementia

Presented by Dr. Ken Robbins, M.D.

ABC's of Dementia
 

Audio

Click to view and listen to an album’s tracks.

Dementia at the End of Life

Play Track
1. Defining advanced dementia
2. Communication
3. What kinds of communication can a patient with advanced dementia still understand?
4. How will my mother, who has dementia, express herself when she is dying?
5. Is it possible to experience reconciliation and closure with my father who has dementia and is dying?
6. Pain and the Difficult Behaviors Caused by Pain
7. How can we treat challenging behaviors exhibited by patients with dementia?
8. The patient seems more restless than before. What's wrong?
9. What if the patient's restlessness does not have a physical cause?
10. How do patients with advanced dementia communicate pain?
11. How is pain treated in patients with advanced dementia?
12. Can medications be used to control aggressive behavior?
13. Infections and Antibiotics
14. Should antibiotics be used for infections such as urinary tract infections?
15. Should my mother's pneumonia be treated?
16. Medications
17. Are there medications that can treat dementia?
18. Should we stop the medications or should she continue taking them?
19. Nutrition, Swallowing and Artificial Nutrition
20. How does advanced dementia affect the patient's nutritional status?
21. What options do caregivers have if their loved one shows signs of losing their appetite?
22. What if the patient is having difficulty chewing or swallowing?
23. My mom often chokes on her food. Is this normal?
24. What are some other ideas to help make mealtime less stressful?
25. Does a feeding tube improve quality of life? How might it affect the course of the disease?
26. Skin Care
27. My mother's skin seems so fragile. What's happening?
28. What can be done to prevent pressure sores or other injuries to the skin?
29. Advance Directives
30. What if my sister's dementia has progressed and she does not have an advance directive, such as a Living Will or a Power of Attorney for Health Care?
31. What is activation of the Power of Attorney for Health Care, and when does activation take place?
32. In my mother's Power of Attorney for Health Care, she has appointed me her primary decision-maker. What are my responsibilities?
33. How do I ensure my brother's wish not to be resuscitated is honored?
34. If my wife has DNR status, does that mean her care will be limited?
35. Hospitalizations and Emergency Room Visits
36. How may an emergency room visit or hospitalization affect a patient with advanced dementia?
37. What resources are available in the hospital setting to help address my husband's dementia care needs?
38. My grandfather need to leave the hospital now, and I cannot provide his care at home. What options are available to me?
39. If my grandfather has another episode, do I have to take him to the hospital?
40. Hospice Eligibility and Services
41. What is hospice care?
42. Can you be more specific about the kind of support that is provided by Agrace HospiceCare?
43. How do I know when someone with dementia is eligible for hospice?
44. Can the patient be eligible for hospice even if she is in early stages of dementia?
45. Are there grief services available for the caregivers of dementia patients in facilities?
46. When a patient with Alzheimer's or dementia loses their "personality," what can we do for the family?
47. Do advanced dementia patients have spiritual needs?
48. How can we meet the spiritual needs of a patient with advanced dementia?
49. Conclusion

Top 50 End of Life Questions

Play Track
1. Why am I so tired?
2. How much time do I have?
3. Can I get married?
4. What should we tell the rest of the family?
5. May I die at home?
6. What is dying like?
7. Will I die suddenly?
8. How soon will I die if I stop dialysis?
9. How did my weak father get out of his bed?
10. Can she hear us?
11. Do you have to tell him that he's dying, because I'd rather you didn't?
12. What is autonomy?
13. Do we have to follow the advance directive to the letter?
14. What is capacity or decisional ability?
15. When and how do you activate the Power of Attorney for Health Care?
16. Should I be resuscitated if my heart stops or my breathing stops?
17. Can I refuse futile care for myself or my loved one?
18. My father doesn't remember that you talked to him yesterday about Mother's dying. Why is that?
19. Is artificial nutrition something I should consider?
20. My mother swallows once in a while. Why can't I feed her?
21. If Mother doesn't eat or drink, why can't you feed her through a vein?
22. Are intravenous fluids appropriate?
23. How about feeding tubes - are they appropriate?
24. Does she feel pain?
25. Why does Agrace HospiceCare prescribe morphine?
26. Why don't you just give pain medicine by injection?
27. Isn't that a lot of morphine?
28. Is one opiate better than another?
29. Is methadone safe?
30. How do you know you are not killing her?
31. What is palliative sedation?
32. Should more tests be done?
33. Should another treatment be pursued?
34. Should we have more transfusions?
35. Why don't you treat the gangrene?
36. Shouldn't the pneumonia be treated?
37. Should antibiotics be used for infections like pneumonia?
38. Can you remove the excess fluid in my mom's abdomen?
39. You said Dad had trouble breathing because of the fluid in his lungs. Can you remove the fluid?
40. Should the blood thinner he's on be stopped?
41. Why are you stopping cortisone?
42. How do you know it is dementia?
43. Do demented patients have feelings?
44. Do demented patients have pain?
45. Do demented patients know they are dying?
46. Can you help me die faster?
47. Isn't that suicide?
48. Isn't that euthanasia?
49. How do you know when someone is close to death?
50. Our father is dying. Why doesn't my brother come to visit him?
51. Conclusion

End of Life Issues

Play Track
1. Gaining the Confidence of the Patient and the Family
2. Gaining a Family's Confidence
3. Helping Families Make Tough Decisions
4. Addressing Spiritual Matters With the Patient
5. Military Service
6. Addressing Code Status
7. Addressing the Question of "What Dying Is Like?"
8. Why We Use Morphine
9. Nutrition and Hydration of Dying Patients
10. Anticipating the Need for a Mechanical Ventilator in Respiratory Crisis
11. Total Sedation
12. How Does One Know a Patient is Dying
13. Prognostication
14. Suicide and Agrace Hospice Care
15. Humor in Hospice Care