FOR PATIENTS AND FAMILIES

While in the care of Bakersfield Community Hospice, you will be surrounded by a team of compassionate, sensitive, and comforting physicians, nurses, social workers, chaplains, home health aides, and volunteers.

Hospice

Hospice is a philosophy of care. It is focused around the patient and their loved family and friends. The goal of hospice is to preserve the quality of life for a terminally ill patient so that they may spend their last days with dignity and quality, surrounded by their loved ones. Hospice aims to treat the patient rather than the disease; therefore, it involves the patient and family in making decisions. Hospice neither hastens nor postpones dying but it provides with presence and specialized knowledge during the dying process. Hospice care is typically given in the home but if needed, it may be given in a hospital, nursing home, or a private hospice facility.

Hospice care is meant for the time when all other treatments can no longer help you, and you are expected to live 6 months or less. Hospice provides you with palliative care, which is treatment to help relieve disease-related symptoms, such as pain, but not cure the disease. You, your family, and your doctor decide together when hospice care should begin.

Often, patients and families don’t start hospice care soon enough because they believe that by starting hospice care, they are giving up. This is not the case. If you get progressively better while in the hospice program, you can be taken out and go into treatment once again. The decision is always in your hands. Bakersfield Community Hospice strives to bring back your quality of life and make the best of each day during the last stages of your illness.

Hospice care is a benefit of the Medicare program and is also covered by Medicaid. Most private insurance companies, HMO’s and managed care plans also offer hospice care as a benefit.