Palliative Care at Home
Palliative Care at Home offers an added layer of support for patients living with a serious illness, their family, and their health care providers. This type of care focuses on improving quality of life through expert symptom management. Patients maintain their current treatment plans and continue seeing their managing clinicians, while also benefiting from the additional social, emotional, and physical support. Palliative Care at Home arranges for coordinated care from physicians, nurse practitioners, and nurses in the home, consisting of:
- In-home and virtual visits with the providers on your care team
- Physical, psychosocial, spiritual, and emotional support
- In-depth discussion about your condition and treatment options
- 24-hour support
- Social services support, including help accessing community resources, financial assistance, disability and other governmental benefits, and caregiver support
Expert Symptom Management
The Palliative Care at Home providers work as a team to provide coordinated care that focuses on managing symptoms such as pain, shortness of breath, fatigue, constipation, nausea, loss of appetite, difficulty sleeping, and depression. By addressing symptoms, the hope is that patients will be able to carry on with daily life and are better able to tolerate medical treatments.
Goals of Care Discussions
The Palliative Care at Home care team works with a patient and their family to identify the patient’s health care wishes and then works to ensure the patient’s care plan aligns with these goals.
Coordination of Care
The Palliative Care at Home care team remains in close communication with a patient’s existing health care providers and works with them to ensure goals are met. The team also assists in identifying other resources that may be beneficial.
Education
The Palliative Care at Home care team provides education about the patient’s illness, doctor’s plan of care, medications, and more. The goal is to empower patients to feel more confident, so they can better plan for the future.
The Mount Sinai at Home service area is expanding as medical personnel become available. Please contact this program to see if Palliative Care at Home is provided where you live, and whether your insurer includes these services as a covered benefit.