While rewarding, family members providing care for a loved one and helping that person age in place in the comfort of home can quickly become emotionally and physically drained, especially when the individual is facing end of life issues. And although the marketing emphasis of most home care agencies is on helping seniors to thrive and remain independent, it’s important to make sure your home care marketing efforts touch on your ability to provide compassionate, highly skilled hospice care as well. Here’s why.
According to Brent Korte, Executive Director of EvergreenHealth Home Care, family caregivers who choose hospice care for a loved one with a life-limiting illness can find themselves immediately transformed back to being in a role as a family member. By having a reliable hospice care team on hand, family members can once again focus on caring instead of caregiving.
However, accepting the idea of hospice care can be difficult for some families. Korte encourages families to start conversations about hospice care from a mutual place of honesty and candor. For instance, one question Korte suggests asking a person with a life-limiting illness is whether he or she is willing to undergo more treatment if the survival rate is relatively low. If the person’s answer is “no,” then looking into palliative or hospice care may be appropriate.
As Korte stresses, hospice care does not change or hasten the timing of death; it changes the experience. Korte tells the story of a park ranger who was on hospice, and whose last wish was to be surrounded by the Douglass Fir trees he had worked around for many years so that he could look up at the trees with his family and friends as he was dying. Meeting the wishes and needs of patients, says Korte, is what hospice care is ultimately about.
Do you need help with tweaking your home care marketing message to include reaching those in need of hospice care? Contact the home care professionals at MOST by calling 800.370.6580, x3, or by completing our simple online contact form to learn more.
