Sponsored: Hospice is a Valuable COVID-19 Resource for Overburdened EMS Professionals

Hospice is a Valuable COVID-19 Resource for Overburdened EMS Professionals

By Lillian Valeron VITAS® Healthcare

The COVID-19 stories of our nation’s first responders and emergency departments (ED) are both personally and professionally wrenching. Yet many similar medical, logistical and emotional challenges have defined the standard of care for hospice and palliative medicine specialists for more than 40 years.

Florida’s EDs, emergency medicine professionals and hospitals can find solutions to the pandemic’s challenges by partnering with a local hospice provider to secure appropriate healthcare for seriously ill patients while accomplishing key goals:

• Identify hospice-eligible patients early and refer them quickly to an appropriate setting of care whether at home, in an inpatient hospice unit, or at a care facility capable of handling COVID-19 patients.

This rapid-response approach to hospice eligibility reduces hospital and ED admission/readmissions, provides care in the most appro-

priate setting, and frees ED/hospital beds for non-COVID care. • Leverage telehealth technology to evaluate and admit patients seamlessly from the ED to hospice care at home or another setting.

Telehealth enables simpler patient monitoring while supporting the education of caregivers and healthcare professionals about end-of-life care. • Engage in timely goals-of-care conversations in the ED to help patients and families identify and document their preferences for end-of-life care—a “soft skills” activity that can also be hosted via telehealth to support timely transitions out of the ED. • Provide complex modalities for hospice patients who require high-acuity, comfort-focused care at home or outside of the hospital, including supportive respiratory therapy and non-invasive ventilation, comfort-focused cardiac care, pain management, wound care, and more. VITAS® Healthcare, a Florida hospice provider since 1978, has partnerships with EMS providers throughout the U.S. to pre-identify and pre-enroll hospice patients in hospice revocation reduction programs that prevent hospital and ED readmissions. VITAS trains dispatchers and paramedics in homebased, end-of-life care, so when a hospice patient calls 911, VITAS and EMS teams work together in real time to provide supportive care and modalities at home to keep patients in crisis out of the ED and hospital.

Transition your COVID-susceptible, hospice-eligible patients to their preferred care setting, relieving burdens on your staff and ED and freeing your acute-care beds.

Download the VITAS mobile app for referrals, locations, and hospice eligibility guidelines (Android and iOS), call 800.93.VITAS (available 24/7), or visit VITAS.com.

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