Our Services
Hospice
Hospice provides comfort and emotional support to terminally ill patients and their families. Pain and symptom control is a primary focus of the hospice team. Hospice care approaches death as a normal process and helps patients to manage pain and other symptoms to allow them to live as fully and comfortably as possible.
Care is provided by a team of professionals who address the medical, nursing, psychological, emotional and spiritual needs of the patient and family. To make a referral, call 830-774-4580.
Your team
- Physicians: Your physician and the hospice team, including the medical director, work together to plan your hospice care.
- Nurses: Hospice nurses specialize in palliative care to keep pain to a minimum and increase comfort. The hospice nurse makes home visits to monitor and evaluate the patient's condition, notifies the physician of any changes, provides the patient and family with information about the illness, and assesses the patient for pain and symptoms of the disease.
- Medical social worker: A medical social worker helps the family with financial, insurance and legal issues and helps them understand the personal and social problems that come with illness—and the dying process.
- Chaplain: A chaplain coordinates the spiritual and pastoral needs of the patient and his or her family. In addition, the hospice chaplain helps patients with end of life issues and the meaning of life.
- Home health aides: Home health aides help the patient with personal care, bathing, position changes and activities of daily living.
- Volunteers: Volunteers offer friendship for the patient and the caregiver they visit frequently, providing emotional support and comfort.
- Bereavement counselors: Grief support is offered to hospice families for one year after the death of a loved one.
Our hospice services
Hospice will provide medical equipment and medication needed to maintain comfort.
Hospice admission criteria
In order to be admitted to hospice, a patient must:
- Have a terminal condition in which the life expectancy is judged to be six months or less by the attending physician.
- Choose hospice care.
- Have a designated caregiver who is mutually agreed upon by the patient, caregiver and hospice staff.
Hospice services are covered by
- Medicare.
- Medicaid.
- Private insurance.
- Self-payment.
No patient will be refused service due to lack of financing.
For more information about donations and memorials or presentations 830-774-4580.
Accreditation
Hospice of Val Verde Regional Medical Center has accreditation
from The Joint Commission. We encourage patients and family members
to notify The Joint Commission of any unresolved concerns, complaints
or grievances about patient care and safety that the agency does
not address. You may call The Joint Commission’s office of quality
monitoring at 1-800-994-6610
or E-mail complaint@jcaho.org.
Thank you for your assistance in our continuing efforts to provide high-quality services to you.
